Tassone after his arrest.Photo: Nassau County Police Dept.
In the apparent end to one of those stories that’s totally hilarious to everyone except the thousands of people who were victimized and betrayed as it ran its course, mega-embezzling Roslyn School District superintendent Frank Tassone was sentenced yesterday to four to twelve years in prison yesterday for stealing $2.2 million from the district.
Tassone, once thought to be both honest and heterosexual, pulled a bit of a double-whammy on adoring Roslyn residents by using the stolen money to finance, among other things, sex vacations with dudes. The Post’s characteristically delightful coverage features a photo spread of the various items Tassone spent his looted loot on, accompanied by pleasantly sensational labels — in classic Post hard-to-tell-whether-it’s-funny-on-purpose style, the montage includes “FAST CARS,” “LONDON HOTELS,” and “DOG FOOD.”
But dog food wasn’t the half of it, as New York’s Robert Kolker explained in his 2004 portrait of Tassone, who was so charismatic and crafty that he actually would’ve gotten away with stealing $2 million if it weren’t for a letter of still-unknown origin that got mailed around town. It’s a crazy story; our favorite character is the “former motorcycle salesman and exotic dancer” who lived in a Tassone-financed Las Vegas pad, but there are plenty more bizarre characters — and reading-comprehension consulting firms used as front companies — where that came from.
— Ben Mathis-Lilley
