Who can say whether the Bronx’s Juan Medina was inspired by this old Mainer joke, but it seems likely

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NY man sold stolen car to Southington man for $18K cash, stole it back from him, then sold it again, police say

So … Silas and his wife Betty were offshore tending their lobster traps when a rogue wave hit their boat and swept Betty overboard. Despite a desparate search by Silas and his fellow fishermen, no trace of Betty was found. Until, that is, a week later, when Silas received a phone call from the Coast Guard:

“We’ve found your wife’s body, Silas”, the excited young Coastie squeaked, “floating a mile offshore — had a dozen lobsters feeding on her, poor soul; what do you want us to do?”

“What do I want you to do? Why, keep the lobstahs, and set her agin, you damn fool.”

And Mr. Medina’s saga:

SOUTHINGTON — After a car he just bought for $18,000 in cash was stolen from his driveway, police said the victim of the apparent scam texted, "I will find you," to the swindler who sold him the vehicle.

The suspect, who had used a false name, forged driver's license and a doctored title, texted back, "Good Luck," with a smirking emoji, according to an arrest warrant for Juan Medina of the Bronx, N.Y.

Medina, 41, was arrested this week on charges that include second-degree larceny, second-degree forgery and criminal impersonation. He was being held on $100,000 bond for an appearance in state Superior Court in New Britain on Aug. 4, according to court records.

On Dec. 23, 2022, Southington officers were dispatched to a Hitchcock Road home, where the resident said he had purchased a 2019 Toyota Highlander he found on Facebook Marketplace, the warrant said.

The 34-year-old victim said he met the seller in Westport that morning and took posession of the vehicle after receiving the title and handing over the cash, police said. The victim also photographed the seller's driver's license, the warrant says. He drove the Highlander home and parked it in his driveway. The keys were not in the vehicle, he told police.

That afternoon, a neighbor noticed a silver Toyota SUV rolling slowly along Hitchcock Road. The vehicle stopped at the victim's house and a man got out and ran toward the Highlander in the driveway. He backed the Highlander onto the street and drove off, police said.

Officer Matthew Leary, with help from investigators in New York, New Jersey and the National Insurance Crime Bureau, found that Medina used a false name with a forged New Jersey driver's license, a forged vehicle title and a bogus vehicle identification number, the warrant says. The Highlander, which was actually a 2017 model, was listed as stolen from New York state, the warrant says.

The NICB investigator found the vehicle at the state Department of Motor Vehicles in Wethersfield, where a second victim of the scam was trying to register the SUV, the warrant says. This victim said a man with a New Jersey driver's license sold the Highlander, and the photo on the license he showed matched the one the Southington victim had photographed, police said. The warrant does not say how much the second victim paid for the vehicle.

Just sayin’ …

What do you do if you couldn’t sell your house for $8.7 million in 2021? Bring it back on in 2025 for $11.250. It'll probably work, too, especially after Tuesday’s primary results (Updated)

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200 Shore Road, now $11.250. Greenwich’s real estate market may be about to enjoy a Mamdani surge, inshallah.

UPDATE: Maybe Greenwich won’t see an influx of rich refugees after all, and I get it: New England, including Connecticut, has increasingly become a hostile environment for businesses and those with taxable income (about 30% of the population, I’d estimate) and if the financial industry, in particular, can pretty much operate from anywhere, why move from the fire to an ever-hotter frying pan? Go west or south, young man.

Wall Street Panics Over Prospect of a Socialist Running New York City.

“I can’t believe I even need to say this, but socialism doesn’t work,” said Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, a bitcoin-focused financial services company. “It has failed in every American city it was tried.”

There were renewed questions about whether Wall Street executives would stay in New York or if Mamdani’s plans for the city would send more financiers to states such as Florida and Texas. Some executives cited concerns about taxes and crime under a potential Mamdani administration as well as fears of rising antisemitism.

Sander Gerber, chief executive of investment firm Hudson Bay Capital, said he fielded texts from some of his 170 employees who said they were “thinking of leaving.”

Some developers and landlords said they are already making plans to exit New York and focus on more business-friendly markets like Miami, Dallas or Nashville.

“I’m depressed and sad,” said Ricky Sandler, who runs Eminence Capital, a Midtown Manhattan hedge fund, which employs 55 people. “If Mamdani becomes mayor, I will likely move my business and family out of New York.”

Pending in Havemeyer; 20 days (Corrected)

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15 Macarthur Drive, $1,925,000. A re-do of one of the original 1948 homes, these owners tried without success to sell it in 2017 to 2018, even though they dropped its price from $1.649 to $1.399. They’re probably glad now that that effort “failed”.

Correction: a Guest commenter sends this information:

Actually, the current owners bought in July 2020 at 1.285
They bought when COVID caused mass panic.

He’s right; I checked the town records. It was an non-MLS sale, so doesn’t show up on their records.

Old Greenwich sale price reported, and the property's history provides an interesting look at price evolution over the past two decades

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47 Arcadia Road, listed at $3.850 million, has sold for $4.2. The house was pretty-well rundown when it sold in a bidding war in 2005 for $1,277,042. Those buyers fixed it up, listed it at $2.550 in 2006 but only got $2.150. Put back on the market in 2013 at $2.395, it sold for $2.550, and again in 2019 for $2.720 on a $2.750 ask. So, a fairly gradual price curve for all those years, while the house stayed in essentially the same condition — a kitchen upgrade, new bathroom fixtures — it was in when that 2005-06 renovation was performed; then came the post-COVID market.

Pending after 41 days

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170 John Street, $8.750 million 43 days. 1942 construction, renovated in 2000, on 9-acres, it’s just around the corner from 118 John Street, built in 1996, 10.78 acres, but of radically different design. I like 118 John Street, as I mentioned here yesterday, but these buyers must have looked at its pictures or even toured it, and chose 180. So there it is.

But caution: although a formal style seems to be preferred by buyers in the current market, other factors may have been in play here

And a subtle hint of danger does seem to excite some well-heeled NYC refugees who miss the drama of that city’s streets and subways

It took 691 days, but they stuck to their price and by golly, they came pretty close; I'd personally find the carrying costs for such a spec house daunting, but some builders have deep pockets.

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27 Weston Hill Road, Riverside, was sold (by Gideon’s clients) for $1.660 million in July 2021, a new house replace it and was put up for sale in December 2022 for $5.495 million. It finally sold yesterday for $5.170.

The pictures for this iteration have been removed from the web, but there’s still up from an earlier one, and because the house has been empty all this time, I imagine they’re about the same, except for the stager’s now-removed furniture.

What the headline should read is "Done with his headfake for Independent and Republican voters, Lamont promises to return to his base Democrats" *

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After vetoes on housing and labor, Lamont tries to make amends

[An unnecessary gesture except to signal who he is and where his sympathies lie: who are these people going to vote for, a Republican? Pshaw.]

Gov. Ned Lamont has turned to repairing relationships frayed by his vetoes of an omnibus housing bill and a measure that would have provided jobless benefits for strikers, both priorities of various elements of the Democratic coalition and its party’s legislative leaders.

…. A call to [ House Majority Leader Jason Rojas] was one of the first Lamont made after the veto Monday. Another went to Ed Hawthorne, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, the labor federation that worked successfully with the Democratic governor on a significant list of first-term labor victories.

The challenge now facing Lamont became clear in two very different conversations: one with a legislative leader who sees and is ready to grasp the building blocks of a housing deal; the other with a union man who sees Lamont unfeeling about workers and immovable on an issue that has come to the fore for labor.

“I was very frank with him,” Hawthorne said in an interview Tuesday. “The state elected Democrats, and Democrats put two bills on his desk that would have made a difference to working people. And he sided with Republicans.”

Lamont cast himself as a labor ally, a Democrat horrified at the Trump administration’s efforts to cripple the influence of public sector unions in the federal workforce and its removal of labor-friendly members of the National Labor Relations Board.

“I think about labor rights, and I think about what the Trump administration is doing to the NLRB and the rights of our workers to organize, rights of our workers to stand up to themselves. We’re trying to do everything we can,” Lamont said Tuesday at a public event at the state Capitol.

In his veto message the previous day about Senate Bill 8, which would have provided jobless benefits to strikers in Connecticut, the governor enumerated the first-term victories he helped deliver for the labor movement.

They included a higher minimum wage, a nearly universal mandate for paid sick time, paid family and medical leave coverage, expanded collective bargaining rights for public employees, and protections for workers who leave captive audience meetings. 

…. Hawthorne acknowledged the governor did those things, but he noted that federal labor law largely preempts states from enhancing the standing of unions to organize workers or negotiate contracts. One notable exception, Hawthorne said, is a state’s ability to remove the prohibition on striking workers collecting unemployment.

“When we asked him to sit down to talk about the [strikers’] bill, the response was, ‘Think of something else,’” Hawthorne said. “But everything else was preempted by federal law.” [“So we needed something to show our dupes”, he means — Ed]

The governor, who was elected in 2018, reelected in 2022 and is considering running again in 2026, also has a what-have-you-done-lately problem with labor.

“There’s first-term Ned Lamont and second-term Ned Lamont,” Hawthorne said. “He mentions the minimum wage — first term; paid family leave — first term; expanded collective bargaining — first term.

Like Connecticut’s gun-confiscation advocates, these people will take what they can get, and keep coming back for more. The Long March continues.

*(Yes, the omission of a comma is intentional)