He claimed he was serving in Iraq while working a second job in Tampa
By Missy Diaz
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
BROWARD CO., Fla. — Former Delray Beach police officer Vincent Balestrieri received a 90-day jail sentence Friday for defrauding the agency out of $8,700, claiming the Navy Reserve called him to active duty in Iraq when he actually took a civilian job in Tampa and collected paychecks from both employers.
During a two-hour hearing, Balestrieri, 37, a former New York City police officer who went on to hold top-secret clearance with the Department of Homeland Security and the Navy Reserve, boasted of his accomplishments — many of which, he said, were top secret and he couldn’t discuss — and blamed his actions on a Delray Beach police captain and the captain’s wife, who Balestrieri said pressured him daily to buy a home he couldn’t afford.
“I wanted to get away from here,” Balestrieri told Circuit Judge William Berger when explaining why he forged a document indicating he had been called to active duty in January 2006. He claimed that he increased his pay grade on the forged document so the city wouldn’t compensate him with gap pay during his absence.
Gap pay is the difference the city pays in reservists’ income when called to active duty. He didn’t know, he said, that the city was depositing $350 into his savings account every two weeks.
“I’m not the best checkbook keeper,” he told Assistant State Attorney Robyn Feibusch. “I didn’t want the money. It was to get away.”
Before claiming he was sent to war and taking leave, Balestrieri also received a week of bereavement pay from the Police Department because his mother had died. But when questioned by the prosecutor Friday, he acknowledged that his mother was still alive and that it was a woman he considered his mother who had passed away.
While working for defense contractor Lockheed Martin in Tampa, Balestrieri and his wife bought a $220,000 home in Riverview. He’s now broke and the home is in foreclosure, he said. He’s lost everything. He works part-time at a group home for troubled youth while holding down a full-time job at a landfill.
“I monitor garbage,” he said.
He spent 14 years with the NYPD, he said, earning the agency’s respect by making more than 3,000 arrests, before going to work for Homeland Security, where, he said, he monitored transnational terrorists, specifically al-Qaida threats.
His job allowed him to meet some very high-ranking government officials, he claimed, and spend time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Jordan and Colombia. The United States averted serious terrorist activity thanks, in part, to his actions, Balestrieri said.
“There are other things [besides Sept. 11] that people in the United States of America will never, ever have a clue about that I was proud to say I helped stop,” he testified.
Balestrieri always dreamed of coming to Florida to be a police officer, he said. There were several retired New York officers working for Delray Beach and he was eager to get his own patrol car and equipment.
“I was like a kid in a candy store,” he said.
But he underestimated Palm Beach County’s cost of living. Then his wife needed spinal surgery. And there was unbending pressure from a captain to buy a home from the captain’s wife. Balestrieri said he paid thousands in down payments for homes he never got.
“I got overwhelmed,” he said during questioning by Assistant Public Defender Jenny Lancaster. “I wanted to get away from here.”
Balestrieri contradicted himself repeatedly, in one breath saying he loved the agency and in the next talking about how some supervisors lied to him, while others encouraged him to roughhouse suspects.
“I tried my best to do everything they told me,” he said.
Balestrieri asked the judge to withhold adjudication so he might again one day work in law enforcement. Prosecutor Feibusch scoffed at the notion, saying she was appalled by Balestrieri’s lack of remorse. He lacks ethics and integrity, she argued.
“He needs to be and feel who he is ... a criminal,” she said.
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