Men try to cash check for corpse

NEW YORK – It’s not every day that two men are accused of trying to cash their dead friend’s Social Security check, with the dead friend sitting in a chair outside the check-cashing shop.

But that’s the trouble the two – David Daldia and James O’Hare, both 65 – got themselves into when they were arrested Tuesday. Their friend, Virgilio Cintron, 66, appears to have died of natural causes within the past few days.

Police said Daldia and O’Hare, both unemployed, plopped Cintron into a chair and wheeled him from his apartment to Pay-O-Matic Check Cashing, several blocks away. The clerk said he needed to sign his own $355 Social Security check. The two men went outside to get him, but by then Cintron, half-dressed and slumped over, had caused quite a stir.

One of those quite interested was Detective Travis Rapp. The two men were arrested and charged with attempted forgery and petty larceny.