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Nearly $500K gone in scam ‘It’s ruined me,’ Connie Rotolo, 70, said of the online romance ruse By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Karina Kovac/Herald
‘It means the world to us’ Elected officials from Nassau and Suffolk counties gathered for a corned beef cook-off to support Oceanside’s Cooper Graham, who is fighting retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer. Story, more photos, page 4.
“I keep hearing his words: ‘Connie, go out and enjoy this money,’” Connie Rotolo, 70, recalled. She was remembering the words of her dying husband of 45 years, whom she had taken care of for 10 years. “‘You deserve it. Go traveling like you always wanted to do, and we never got that opportunity. Connie, take care of yourself … I know I’m not going to make it.’” Rotolo’s husband died in 2019, leaving his money as well as hers in their savings account. Then, bereaved and lonely as the coronavirus pandemic swept the
world, she joined the dating site Zoosk in the summer of 2020. Before long Rotolo would lose her life savings of $475,000 to an alleged romance scammer. Online for only three days in her Oceanside home, she got a message from a man who told her his name was Andrew Deckert, and that he was a civil engineer from Babylon working in Manila, in the Philippines. When he got back to the states, he wrote, they could go for coffee and a chat. Messages from Deckert quickly turned into relentless love bombing, and at one point he declared, “Baby, I love you.” But Continued on page 9
Senior Tim Kunken is up-and-coming documentarian Oceanside High student’s film takes honorable mention in C-SPAN competition By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
In a clear and crisp voice, Oceanside High School senior Tim Kunken starts his documentary “Glass-Steagall: Reexamined.” Kunken’s video — which he researched, narrated and edited — was an honorable mention winner in C-SPAN’s national 2023 StudentCam competition. Kunken, whose passion for social studies and documentaries has been guiding his college application process, received $250 for his video tracking the history of financial regulations.
Watch Tim’s documentary Check it out online at tinyurl. com/TimKunken Kunken’s media teacher, Tracy Busk, told him about the annual StudentCam competition at the beginning of the school year. The competition’s theme was “If you were a newly elected member of Congress, which issue would be your first priority and why?” Kunken, who was
new to the world of finance and was eager to learn more, now says it’s more relevant than ever and adds that hindsight is 20/20. To begin the documentary, Kunken started back in the 1930s, following the regulation of banks until the modern era, where he says the legacy of Glass-Steagall started to stand out. Glass-Steagall was introduced as a law that separated commercial banking from investment banking in the United States. It was passed in 1933 as part of the Banking Act but was later repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
“I talked about the development of the 2008 financial crisis,” Kunken said, “and then specifically steps to add in more financial regulation, like with the Dodd-Frank bill, and then later on, (of) more relevance today, the deregulation of that act in 2018. So, a very big chunk
of the documentary made was all about telling the story of financial regulation in general. And then I kind of bookmarked it at the end of it with okay, this is important. We need new financial restrictions and to add some more stability and security to Continued on page 5