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Sex offender looted St. Mel’s

A convicted sex offender, Joseph Denice, from Whitestone recently pled guilty to charges of forging checks from St. Mel’s School in Flushing, stealing more than $7,700, according to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
Denice has been jailed since his arrest in January.
“The defendant has admitted his guilt and acknowledged that he used his position as a trusted volunteer to divert monies for his own personal gain,” said Brown. “The defendant has now been held accountable for his greed and deceit and the term of imprisonment to be imposed is more than warranted.”
Denice deposited the checks into his mother’s bank account, telling her that they were his paychecks, according to the DA.
The defendant, 25, was previously sentenced to six months in prison with five years probation for sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy. He served from June 21, 2010, and was released on October 15, 2010.
Working as an intern at I.S. 25, Denice met with a boy and mother, passing himself off as an Administration for Child Services (ACS) worker. He claimed that he had to perform “body scans” on the boy as part of a court order, otherwise the child might be removed from his home. Afterward, he gave the mother a forged letter from a non-existent family court judge demanding for more body scans.
It was later discovered that Denice had been volunteering in schools across Queens, including St. Mel’s, St. Luke’s School in Whitestone and St. Kevin School in Flushing.
Pleading on May 16, Denice also admitted to falsely reporting emergencies to 9-1-1 operators, as well as falsely reporting neglect and abuse of children by their parents to the ACS. One of the children was the same 12-year-old he had molested, a spokesperson for the DA said.
He admitted to two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, one count of second-degree falsely reporting an incident, one count of first-degree falsifying business records and one count of second-degree falsifying business records.
Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Pauline A. Mullings is set to sentence Denice on June 1. He faces five to 10 years in prison.