By Connor Adams Sheets
A Whitestone man who was fired from three northeast Queens Catholic schools, including St. Mel’s School in Flushing, after his status as a sex offender was revealed, has been sentenced to five to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to forgery charges, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said last week.
On May 17, Joseph Denice, 25, pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument and falsifying business records for bilking St. Mel’s Church, at 154-24 26th Ave., out of thousands of dollars by forging and cashing five checks totaling more than $7,700 that belonged to the St. Mel’s Religious Education Office in December 2010, Brown said.
He also pleaded guilty to one count of falsely reporting an incident in connection with anonymous calls he made to the city Administration for Children’s Services in October 2009 and March 2010, alleging that two young boys were being neglected in one case and abused in another, prompting the agency to conduct investigations into each case, Brown said.
Denice went on to admit that he placed five anonymous calls to 911 last year, falsely reporting either an odor of gas or fire at locations near his home, causing the FDNY to respond to each of the calls, the DA said.
Queens Criminal Court Judge Joseph Zayas sentenced Denice June 1 to two consecutive terms of 2 1/2 to five years in prison. Denice had been held in jail in lieu of $15,000 bail since his Jan. 13 arrest.
“The defendant’s wide-ranging schemes have been brought to a halt by the lengthy sentence imposed today,” Brown said in a statement. “In addition to forging checks for monetary gain, the defendant wreaked havoc throughout Queens County by making false emergency calls which jeopardized the lives of first responders and the public and cruelly saddled innocent parents with false allegations of child abuse and neglect,” Brown said.
Denice’s attorney, Harvey Weinroth, declined Monday to comment on the case.
Denice admitted finding starter checks in the St. Mel’s Religious Education Office in December and writing out five of the checks, totaling $7,707.22, in his name, then telling his mother they were paychecks and that she should deposit in her bank account, according to Brown.
In June 2010, Denice was convicted of and jailed for sexual abuse, but he passed a background check requested by the diocese before beginning his volunteer work at St. Mel’s School in Flushing, St. Kevin’s Church in Bayside, St. Kevin’s School in Flushing and St. Luke’s in Whitestone in about 2007, according to the Brooklyn Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, which includes Queens congregations.
After serving six months in jail for fondling and sexually assaulting a child in 2009, Denice volunteered at the schools but they never found out about his sex offense because he accepted a plea deal that allowed him to be registered as a Level 1 sex offender rather than the Level 2 designation the crimes usually carry, according to state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside).
Level 1 sex offenders are not listed on the sex offender registry and the schools were never contacted about his conviction. The diocese barred him from volunteering at its schools when parents raised concerns about his allegedly contacting a minor through the social networking website Facebook.
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
