Guilty gun seller ‘Scarfaces’ 25 yrs.

Say hello to your little verdict.

A brazen gun trafficker who liked to quote from “Scarface” — and who was caught on surveillance video selling an AR-15-style assault rifle on a Chelsea street corner — was quickly convicted by a Manhattan jury yesterday.

It took less than five hours to find Sentell Smith guilty of the entire 21-count indictment against him, including the state’s toughest gun-sale statute, first-degree criminal weapons sales, reserved for gun dealers caught selling 10 or more guns.

The experience left jurors shell-shocked.

“That was a scary gun,” one juror, who declined to give her name, said of the .223-caliber Remington semiautomatic assault rifle Smith sold for $2,000 to an undercover parked at 27th Street and Seventh Avenue in July 2011.

Steven Hirsch

SENTELL SMITH Kingpin? Try pinhead.

A year-long investigation by the Manhattan DA’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit and NYPD caught the Alabama native on video getting into a car with the rifle hidden inside a long body pillow. Footage shows him tossing the pillow onto the back seat before he climbs into the front passenger seat and negotiates the sale.

“You f--k with me, you f--king with the best,” Smith boasts on another surveillance tape, quoting Al Pacino’s character in the iconic ’80s gangster flick.

Smith sold undercovers a total of 11 guns, including two sales he brokered on a Rikers pay phone. Investigators said each gun sold for $1,000 or more, and each had been circulating on the streets for years.

Smith was a rarity: a gun-trafficking defendant who took the stand in his own defense. “I was entrapped,” he told jurors yesterday, claiming bizarrely that the money he was taped handling was actually just being loaned.

“The defendant’s story really stretches the boundaries of the laugh test,” assistant district attorney Christopher Prevost said in closing arguments.

Smith faces at least 25 years prison when he is sentenced Feb. 13 before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin.

laura.italiano@nypost.com

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Fed aims for a 6.5% jobless rate

Six and a half percent unemployment in America would mean almost 2.1 million more people working than today. At the rate the country has been creating new jobs each month, it would take more than a year to find work for that many people.

Keep 6.5 percent in mind this week when the Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday to talk about its efforts to push interest rates down. The hope is that the cheap cash will spur on investment leading to job creation. After all, the central bank has promised to keep its target interest rate near zero as long as more than 6.5 percent of Americans in the workforce are without work. The Fed has put other conditions on maintaining its historically low interest rate such as low inflation, but official measures remain tame. So its job growth the Fed is looking for.

It won’t have to wait long for the latest update. On Friday the first jobs report of 2013 will be released. Hiring has been a slow grind but it has been positive.

Finding work in January, though, can be tricky. Winter weather, a hangover from the holidays and seasonal work ending can slow down hiring.

It will be months, maybe even a couple of years before the U.S. unemployment rate hits 6.5 percent. There is nothing magical about that number, but as long as the Federal Reserve has it in its sights, so should we.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

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Broward contractor accused of accepting bribe for Florida Keys roadwork

A Pompano Beach contractor has been charged by federal authorities with bribery for accepting money to steer a state Department of Transportation contract to a subcontractor working on traffic signals in the Florida Keys, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Ron Capobianco Jr., 40, is charged with committing bribery in connection with programs receiving federal funds. If convicted, he could get 10 years in prison. He had his first appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer Wednesday morning.

He is accused of accepting $4,000 for steering a $25,000 contract to a subcontractor. Prosecutors did not say who that subcontractor is or whether the subcontractor approached authorities or they approached the subcontractor.

Prosecutors say Capobianco worked as an engineering and inspection consultant at Miami's Metric Engineering Inc. DOT contracted with Metric to provide services including designing, inspecting and troubleshooting construction of roads, signs and traffic signals.

DOT considered Capobianco an expert on signalization and lighting construction, including the use of video cameras for traffic signalization and control. Prosecutors say that around 2009, DOT began its work in Marathon to improve traffic flow.

They say that around May 2009, an agent of the subcontractor offered to pay Capobianco $5,000 if the subcontractor could receive at least $25,000 to install video detection equipment. Capobianco reportedly agreed to the deal, enabling the subcontractor to make a significant profit.

The subcontractor's estimate was approved and subsequently paid by the state after the equipment was installed. Then around May 2009, Capobianco reportedly met with an agent of the subcontractor in Plantation in Broward County and was paid $4,000 in cash for his help getting the subcontractor the work.

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SAG Awards Flashback: Jon Hamm 2008

Jon Hamm's Mad Men role of "Don Draper" changed his life. After years of floating around in the acting world, he landed on a lead role on the period drama and has since been one of Hollywood's most popular actors. In 2008, it began with a flurry of fame, which he gratefully accepted.

The acclaim was instant. After the premiere season of Mad Men, Hamm and the show won Golden Globes, and he and the cast were nominated for two awards at the 2008 SAG Awards. It was a rapid rise, but Hamm was ready for it all and was reveling in it.

"You look stunning tonight. Can I just say that?" Hamm charms ET's former co-host Mary Hart, whom he had just met. "Blue is a great color. I'm on board."

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As for the reason that he was standing on the platform and charming Mrs. Hart to begin with, Hamm says he's excited that Mad Men has been an instant success and that his role has been so overwhelmingly acclaimed.

"It is a big deal and it's exciting because so many people worked so hard on [the show]," he says. "It's nice to see it being recognized by the community at large, and it feels great."

While the show's interwoven themes of period-related misogyny and racism have been contested throughout the show's five-season run, it has nevertheless been a hit with critics and its loyal audiences.

VIDEO: Globes Flashback '08: 'Mad Men' Wins Together

"I'm very proud of the show," he says. "We try to be true to the era that it takes place in in the early sixties, and that's sort of what happened [then]. A lot of people talk about the smoking and the drinking and sort of gloss over the misogynistic aspects of it, but fortunately we've come a long way from that time."

While the show has been adorned in Golden Globes and Emmys over the years, it hasn't had as much relative success at the SAGs. The cast has won two SAG Awards for Best Ensemble in a Drama, but Hamm has never won the Best Actor Award despite being nominated for all of Mad Men's seasons.

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Like clockwork, Hamm is nominated once again for Best Actor and the cast is nominated as well.

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Elderly woman struck and killed by private bus in Brooklyn

An elderly woman woman was struck and killed by a private bus in Brooklyn this morning, authorities said.

She was hit about 7:15 a.m. in Canarsie on Avenue K and East 105th Street and died at the scene, according to an FDNY spokesman.

No criminality is suspected, police said.

Benny J. Stumbo

Police at the scene today.

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Lennar design accommodates multigenerational families

In some cases, it may be Grandma moving in with the family. Other times, it may be a recent college graduate returning to the nest.

For all sorts of reasons — financial, medical, personal — a rising number of Americans are moving into extended family households.

Spotting a niche in the growing trend, Lennar Corp. has launched a new concept tailor-made for multigenerational family living.

It’s basically a house within a house: a smaller living unit next to the main home designed to provide independence but also access to the rest of the family household.

“People are really loving the whole concept,” said Carlos Gonzalez, president of the southeast Florida division of Lennar, a Miami-based home-building giant. “We adapted to the market from a design standpoint.”

In Miami-Dade County, Lennar is selling various versions of multigenerational homes in three new developments in Doral, Kendall and Homestead.

Louis Moreno of Kendall and his wife, Danilza Velez, signed a contract for a large NextGen home in The Vineyards development in Homestead last October — even before the models had been built.

“We loved it,” said Moreno, a 45-year-old engineer.

Moreno said his mother-in-law will be able to use the new suite when she visits, as will his family members who frequently come to town from Puerto Rico. “This will provide them with more comfortable space and more privacy,” he said. He also plans to use it as a game room and entertainment area.

The two-story Zinfandel home Moreno picked has three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms in the main home with a family room and two-car garage. In addition, it has an ample 789-square-foot suite with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchenette. The suite has its own garage, a separate front entrance and an internal door connecting to the main home.

The Zinfandel, which has 2,249 square feet of air-conditioned space in the main house, starts at $283,990 in the Homestead community at 128 SE 28th Ter., but a similar home in Kendall would run about $100,000 more, primarily because of higher land costs, Fernandez said. (In Doral, there is a NextGen home priced at $677,990.)

Some multigenerational models have suites as small as 489 square feet, but all have a separate entrance, a bedroom, a bathroom and some sort of kitchen space.

The idea takes various shapes. One option at the Kendall Square development at 16950 SW 90th St. is a Granny unit above a detached garage.

“Independence is the key word,” said Frank Fernandez, director of sales and marketing for the southeast Florida division.

Depending on local zoning rules, some homes can have full kitchens, others are restricted to kitchenettes with a microwave but no stove. Similarly, some municipalities permit the space to be used as a rental, others prohibit it.

The choice is proving popular. Fernandez said in The Vineyards development in Homestead, 10 of the 14 homes sold to date are NextGen. At Kendall Square, 35 of 107 sales are multigenerational, and at the Isles at Grand Bay development at 11301 NW 74th Street in Doral, five of 48 houses are.

Adapting homes for special needs, such as wheelchairs and safety railings, is done at cost, Fernandez said: “That is company policy.”

As one of the nation’s largest home builders, Lennar has been rebounding strongly from the housing crash. Last week, the builder, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, posted better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Nov. 30, 2012.

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Wife of Boca Raton cop accused of running prostitution service

BOCA RATON It wasn’t the stereotypical prostitution ring where girls stop cars asking johns if they want a date and turn their pay over to a pimp. Nor was it as fancy as the escorts that wealthy men hire for weekend trips in Las Vegas, authorities say.

But a ring advertised online as Sara’s Entertainment Service provided thousands of dollars to two local women, allowing at least one of them to live in a nice home.

The women behind the business — Denise McCoy, the wife of a Boca Raton police officer, and Sara Marin, who goes by several different aliases — even engaged in the sexual trade themselves, authorities say.

The service came to a halt Tuesday when Marin, 42, and McCoy, 34, were taken into custody. Both were being held at the Palm Beach County Jail late Wednesday.

Before Tuesday, the women allegedly were living off the earnings of their own sexual activity with men and the earnings of at least six of their hired escorts. The business raked in tens of thousands of dollars since at least February 2012. Marin’s six-bedroom home, where the two women were arrested, is in Canyon Isles, a gated suburban Boynton Beach neighborhood.

The women face charges of money laundering and procuring prostitutes by living off their earnings, but they don’t face human-trafficking charges. Authorities “didn’t uncover anything that would make us believe that they were working against their will,” said John Vecchio, violent crimes supervisor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Miami regional center.

Three agencies — city police, FDLE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — started investigating the service five months ago when one hired escort, Carla Sardinha, was detained on immigration violations.

Sardinha told authorities she was forced to work as a prostitute in the Boca Raton area for the past nine months. She had arrived from Brazil in August 2011 and met with a woman she knew as only “Sara,” a city police probable-cause affidavit said.

Marin, also originally from Brazil, allegedly told Sardinha she owned an escort service and offered her a job. In September, Sardinha called Marin, but spoke with McCoy — another Brazilian, who told jail officials she lives in suburban Boca Raton — instead.

At first, Sardinha told authorities, McCoy told her she wasn’t required to have sexual intercourse with the men she escorted. However, once McCoy found out Sardinha had only a fake passport, McCoy told her she would go to jail if she didn’t have sex with clients because she was in the U.S. illegally.

Sardinha and at least six other women between the ages of 21 and their mid-30s would meet their clients in at least two apartments in suburban Boca Raton. Law enforcement conducted surveillance at 9859 Boca Gardens Circle North and 22312 Calibre Court.

City police and FDLE conducted at least two undercover operations in October and November. In November, officers spoke with men who admitted to paying the service for sexual acts. The women often charged $200 per hour, and they’d give half to the business. The payments were the only source of income for McCoy and Marin, authorities said.

While documents showed no reported income since the first quarter of 2009, McCoy and Marin’s bank accounts showed they were making money. Marin was found to have $40,779 deposited between mid-July and mid-December, while McCoy had more than $29,000 deposited from mid-March to November, the affidavit said.

McCoy’s husband of six years, city police officer Samuel McCoy, was not arrested in the investigation and is not a subject of it at this time, Vecchio said. McCoy was suspended in 2009, the Sun-Sentinel reported, for looking at pornography on his work computer. That same year he was caught taking pictures of his genital area while on duty.

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Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged Catholics on Thursday to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to win converts, as he launched his own smartphone app streaming live footage of his speeches.

The websites – often associated with endless postings of idle gossip and baby photos – could be used as “portals of truth and faith” in an increasingly secular age, the pontiff said in his 2013 World Communications Day message.

“Unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people,” the 85-year old Pope said in the a letter published on the Vatican‘s website.

The Holy See has become an increasingly prolific user of social media since it launched its ‘new evangelization’ of the developed world, where some congregations have fallen in the wake of growing secularization and damage to the Church’s reputation from a series of sex abuse scandals.

The Pope himself reaches around 2.5 million followers through eight Twitter accounts, including one in Latin.

Belying his traditionalist reputation, the Pope praised connections made online which he said could blossom into true friendships. Online life was not a purely virtual world but “increasingly becoming part of the very fabric of society,” he said.

Social networks were also a practical tool that Catholics could use to organize prayer events, the pope suggested. But he called for reasoned debate and respectful dialogue with those with different beliefs, and cautioned against a tendency towards “heated and divisive voices” and “sensationalism”.

The websites were creating a new “agora”, he added, referring to the gathering spaces that were the centers of public life in ancient Greek cities.

The speech coincided with the launch of ‘The Pope App’, a downloadable program that streams live footage of the pontiff’s speaking events and Vatican news onto smartphones.

Pope Benedict‘s embrace of new media responds to the Church’s concern that it is invisible on the internet.

The Vatican commissioned a study of internet use and religion prior to the pope’s Twitter debut, which found the majority of U.S. Catholics surveyed were unaware of any significant Church presence online.

(Reporting by Naomi O’Leary; editing by Andrew Heavens)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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SAG Awards Flashback: Helen Mirren 2007

Helen Mirren has received many accolades for her acting over the years, but no year was more special for her than 2007. The nominations and awards came crashing over the English actress for her roles as Queens Elizabeth I and II. Backstage after winning an award at the SAG Awards, Dame Mirren finds her king.

At that year's SAGs, Mirren was nominated for both of her Queen Elizabeth performances: Best Actress in a TV Movie or Miniseries for Elizabeth I and Best Lead Actress for The Queen. She had just received Golden Globes for the two acclaimed performances and was nominated for what could be her first Oscar.

It was an exciting year for Mirren, who embraces her "Woman of the Year" tag from ET's former correspondent Jann Carl but wishes that the sweetness of her success weren't so concentrated.

VIDEO: Oscars Flashback '07: Helen Mirren and Jamie Foxx

Also having a career year for his acting was Forest Whitaker, who received a Golden Globe, SAG, and an Oscar for his role in The Last King of Scotland, which was also written by The Queen writer Peter Morgan.

Although he didn't literally play a king in the film, Whitaker takes on a royal persona when congratulating Mirren backstage for her win, spoiling her with compliments and kisses.

"There's nothing like that particular role," she says of her role as Elizabeth I. "...It demanded everything you had as an actress/actor and I gave it everything that I had, everything. It means so much to me for it to be recognized here in America."

RELATED: Helen Mirren to Play the Queen Again

Her success at that year's awards season was beyond mere recognition; it bordered more on the lines of idolatry. Or fittingly: worship.

Mrs. Mirren went on to win her other award that night for The Queen and also won the Oscar a few weeks later for her role in the film.

While she has since stepped down from her royal platform, she has another opportunity to add to her SAGs collection with a nomination for her leading role as Alfred Hitchcock's wife in Hitchcock.

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Rare posters seized by Nazis net $2.5M at NYC auction

A poster collection seized from a Jewish collector by the Nazis and only returned to his descendants in recent years has brought in approximately $2.5 million at a New York auction.

Born in 1881, Hans Sachs started collecting posters as a teen and became Germany's leading private collector with 12,500 posters. The Nazis seized the collection in 1938, and the posters were held behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.

His grandson Peter Sachs went through a legal battle for several years to get back what was left of the collection.

Just over 1,200 posters were sold by Guernsey's over the weekend in the first of three sales.

AP

Peter Sachs poses in front of two posters, pieces from his father Hans Sachs' Poster Collection, in 2007.

A poster called "Kunstsalon Aktuaryus" dating to around 1900 sold for $57,950.

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