Glasslinks |
Glass & The Law in the News |
February 25, 1998 |
| Window Business Owner Jailed NEW YORK - A New York glass installer has been sentenced to up to five years in prison for smashing storefront windows of posh Manhattan shops to drum up business. Jason Harte, 28, of New Rochelle, New York, who was president of Crystal Glass Co., was charged with conspiracy and grand larceny for breaking windows worth more than $155,000 in some of Manhattan's most chic shopping areas. He pleaded guilty in January to a lesser charge of criminal mischief. Harte and two accomplices used slingshots, swung hammers and threw rocks during a late-night window-smashing campaign between September 1996 and May 1997, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said Harte's seven family-owned glass companies had contracts with the victimized businesses to replace smashed windows. Harte previously pleaded guilty in July 1996, and was sentenced to five years probation, for breaking more than $1 million worth of windows at such stores as Cartier and Chanel, prosecutors said. He was officially sentenced on Wednesday to two-and-a-half to five years in prison. His co-defendant and one of his salesmen, Gerry Montello, of Brooklyn, New York, has pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and conspiracy and will be sentenced next month. He faces up to seven years in prison. The third defendant, Gene Terrance Jones, also a salesman, pleaded to attempted criminal mischief. He was released after serving eight months of his one-year jail sentence. |
source: Reuters News Service |