Local officials help Island Park family that lost $30K slated for Sandy repairs

Like many living on Long Island’s South Shore, it has been a long, drawn out process for the Hassett family, of Island Park, to raise their home after Hurricane Sandy. It became even more difficult when they had $30,000 of federally awarded funds stolen from them in the spring.

With the help of State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, the Nassau County Police Department’s Fourth Precinct and several other agencies, the family received the full refund from Chase Bank in September.

“It was lots of hands involved in this whole thing,” Laura Hassett said.

Early this year, New York Rising awarded the family with funds to raise their home in Island Park. The Hassetts created a new account at Chase, a different bank than they normally use, expecting to keep the funds safe and separate from their everyday finances. Hassett explained that they did not touch the account often — only when making payments for the house.

When Hassett and her husband, Gerard, tried writing a check to their contractors in May, they realized that the account was hacked and about $30,000 was missing. It appeared that large companies had wired two transactions of $10,000 out of the account in addition to other transactions in March and April. Because the Hassetts did not check on the account aside from making house payments, they had not previously noticed. Chase did not alerted them of the suspicious activity and refused to grant the Hassetts a refund when they reported it, Laura said.

“[Chase Bank] basically told us that we were out of luck because it was over 30 days,” Laura said. “That was a big pill for us to try and swallow.”

Hassett approached Kaminsky at the Island Park Kiwanis Lobster Bake on July 27 and told him about the issue. He quickly stepped in to help.

“Six years later, some Long Islanders are still not home and many are still suffering financially,” Kaminsky said. “It is incumbent upon all of us to work to better our neighbors and I am glad to play a role in helping the Hassetts.”

From there, investigators from the Fourth Precinct and members of other agencies got involved. They discovered that parties from Goldman Sachs, Discover Card, Target and other large corporations wired the money from the account.

After four months of fighting and Kaminsky’s second attempt to appeal Chase’s decision on the Hassett’s behalf, the multi-billion dollar company finally replaced the money in the account.

“I cried,” Hassett said. “I was so happy. Things started to roll in our favor once Todd Kaminsky and the police got involved. Our branch representative at Chase in Oceanside was also very helpful.”

The Hassett family’s home-raising project is still underway. They said they hope for it to be completed by March 2019 and are currently staying in another house in Island Park.

“This was not supposed to last this long,” Hassett said. “We’re not there yet, and it’s going to be a challenge.”