Woman claimed fake Sandy damages on North Merrick apartment

Jena Sowinski pleaded guilty last Thursday to filing a fraudulent claim with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster assistance funds after Hurricane Sandy. FEMA paid her more than $18,000 for rental assistance and personal property damage between December 2012 and May 2013.

She entered her guilty plea on Jan. 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in Central Islip. At press time, Robert Nardoza, spokesman for Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, said that a date for Sowinski’s sentencing had not been set.

Sowinski first applied for FEMA disaster assistance on Nov. 6, 2012, claiming that Sandy had damaged her home on Express Street in Plainview and that her mailing address was now on Meadowbrook Road in Merrick, according to the federal criminal complaint. It states that Sowinski changed her story on Dec. 2, 2012, when she told FEMA that her Meadowbrook Road apartment was damaged.

The apartment is actually in North Merrick, which saw little flooding from Sandy. Sowinski also informed FEMA that the apartment was a rental and her primary residence. She notified FEMA on Jan. 17, 2013, that her “post-disaster address” was on Park Manor Court in Glen Cove. From December 2012 to May 2013, FEMA made six payments to Sowinski, ranging from $1,650 to $4,183, for rental assistance and personal property damage, totaling $18,283.

The complaint states that Sowinski submitted documents to FEMA in January that purportedly supported her claims, including leases, rental receipts, an itemized list of personal property losses and a written explanation of how Sandy had left her Meadowbrook Road apartment unlivable. The documents appeared to have been authored and signed by the owner of Sowinski’s apartment.

David Hines, a special agent in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, stated in an affidavit that he spoke to the owner, who told him that Sowinski had been a tenant of hers for about seven years on a verbal lease agreement. The owner said the building sustained only minor landscaping damage, and denied that she had authored or signed any of Sowinski’s documents, according to Hines.

“Defendants brazenly stole disaster relief funds, rubbing salt in neighbors’ and communities’ wounds,” stated Lynch’s office in a Twitter message last year.

Sowinski’s attorney, Robert Del Grosso, said he had no comment.