Internet bubble millionaire goes from dot.com to drug con: Jennifer Sultan gets 4 years in scheme

This dot.com millionaire has now gone from penthouse to poorhouse to Big House.

A Manhattan judge wrote the latest chapter in the riches-to-rags story of pretty Jennifer Sultan today -- promising her a four-year prison sentence as she pleaded guilty to gun conspiracy and drug sales.

"Yes," Sultan, a 38-year-old recovering pain killer addict, answered sadly, when asked by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin if she'd sold felony weight oxycodone to an undercover cop last spring.

Asked if she'd joined in a conspiracy that sold loaded, operable firearms, Sultan gave a slight smile as she sat at the defense table, her waist-length brown hair hanging forward over one shoulder.

Steven Hirsch

Jennifer Sultan at court today. The dot.com millionaire got four years in gun and drug scheme.

"Yes. Reluctantly," she said.

Sultan has been held since her arrest last summer for the same Queens-based drug-and-gun-gang conspiracy that ensnared convicted NYPD gun thief Nicholas Mina.

She was caught sending text messages to the ring's leader last June saying she had a .357 Magnum "toy" -- meaning a gun -- for sale for $850, according to the indictment against her.

She was also caught on wiretaps asking about firearm prices, and talking about a prior occasion when a gun she gave the ring to sell turned out to be inoperable.

"She's come 180 degrees from when I met her," after her arrest, her lawyer, Frank Rothman, said after court.

"She was unfocused, distracted, drug addicted," he said. "And she is now alert, oriented, and ready to get back to what she does best -- holistic healing," he said of Sultan, a trained acupuncturist.

With good behavior and factoring time she's already served, Sultan could be released in under two years, he said.

When Sultan was just 25, she and a boyfriend built one of the first Internet companies to offer live event streaming on the Web, selling it for $70 million.

By two years ago, she filed for personal bankruptcy. The 6,000-foot East 17th Street loft she shared with her ex-boyfriend is for sale for $6 million; Sultan's share of any sale would not cover her debts, her lawyer has argued.

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AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DOESN’T COVER LONG-TERM CARE POLICIES

Starting next year, the Affordable Care Act will largely prohibit insurers who sell individual and small-group health policies from charging women higher premiums than men for the same coverage.

Long-term-care insurance, however, isn’t bound by that law, and the country’s largest provider of such coverage has announced it will begin setting its prices based on sex this spring.

“Gender pricing is good for insurance companies,” said Bonnie Burns, a policy specialist at California Health Advocates, a Medicare advocacy and education organization, “but it’s bad public policy and it’s bad for women.”

Genworth Financial says the new pricing reflects the fact that women receive two of every three claims dollars. The change will affect only women who buy new individual policies, or about 10 percent of all purchasers, according to the company. The new rates won’t be applied to existing policyholders or those who apply as a couple with their husbands.

“This change is being made now to reflect our actual claims experience and help stabilize pricing,” Genworth Financial spokesman Thomas Topinka said in an email.

Women’s premiums may increase by 20 to 40 percent under the new pricing policy, said Jesse Slome, executive director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The average annual premium for a 55-year-old who qualified for preferred health discounts and bought between $165,000 and $200,000 of coverage was $1,720 last year, according to the association.

Experts say they expect other long-term-care insurers will soon follow suit.

Long-term-care insurance provides protection for people who need help with basic daily tasks such as bathing and dressing. It typically pays a set amount for a certain number of years — say, $150 daily for three years — for care provided in a nursing home, assisted living facility or at home. Never a very popular product with consumers, many of whom found it unaffordable, in recent years the industry has struggled and many carriers have raised premiums by double digits or left the market.

Consumer health advocates say they aren’t surprised that women’s claims for long-term-care insurance are higher than men’s.

Because women typically live longer than men, they frequently act as caregivers when their husbands need long-term care, advocates say, thus reducing the need for nursing help that insurance might otherwise pay for. Once a woman needs care, however, there may be no one left to provide it.

“Women live longer alone than men,” Burns said. “If you don’t have a live-in caregiver when you start needing this kind of care, you’re in big trouble.”

LuMarie Polivka-West knows the potential problems all too well. Polivka-West, 64, is the senior director of policy and program development for the Florida Health Care Association, a trade organization for nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

About 15 years ago, she bought a long-term-care policy. The company went out of business after five years, and she let her policy lapse rather than switch to another plan with higher premiums and less comprehensive coverage. But she’s reconsidering that decision. Polivka-West’s husband is four years older than she is. Her mother died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 89 after struggling with it for eight years. What if a similar fate awaits her?

Polivka-West thinks insurers shouldn’t be allowed to charge her more just because she’s a woman.

“The Affordable Care Act recognized the gender bias in health insurance,” she said. “The same (rules) should apply to long-term-care insurance.”

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Miami mothers fight cause of mental impairment

Almost from the beginning, Michele Kaplan knew something was amiss.

Her son Matthew’s childhood milestones – walking, talking – were delayed.

“We knew we had a developmental problem and after going to pediatricians and geneticists, he was finally diagnosed,’’ says Kaplan, 37, of Miami. “I don’t know what is scarier: not knowing what was wrong, or getting the diagnosis of such a rare syndrome.’’

Matthew, now 7, has Fragile X, a genetic syndrome that causes intellectual disability and is most commonly found in boys. The diagnosis sent Kaplan scrambling to seek treatment options and find other families in a similar position. She had little success. That scarcity of support and help in navigating the still-developing Fragile X world inspired Kaplan, along with another mother, to establish a foundation.

The Families for Fragile X foundation, now celebrating its fifth anniversary, has offered support for dozens of families with children diagnosed with the condition. To mark the anniversary, the non-profit foundation is hosting a fundraiser 5K trail run/walk Saturday at Virginia Key along with other activities for children.

“For parents dealing with Fragile X, it is difficult and a very long road. Often, they have already had concerns when the child is, say, 14 or 15 months, when they are already experiencing delays, but in so many cases, they are not diagnosed until they are 3 years old,’’ said Dr. Deborah Barbouth, director of the South Florida Fragile X Clinic, which currently serves about 60 families. “We know through research that early intervention can really help which is why education is so important.’’

Fragile X is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and the leading genetic cause of autism. An estimated 1 in 4,000 males and 1 in 8,000 females have the condition. Behaviors and characteristics include developmental delays, anxiety and hyperactivity, elongated faces and protruding ears.

So far, the foundation has raised more than $500,000 to aid in medical research and education, some of which benefits the South Florida Fragile X clinic, part of the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. The foundation has provided 12 grants to needy families for evaluations at the clinic – each ranging from $500 to $2,500 -- one of first critical steps to addressing the condition. It has also sponsored educational conferences and pushed for early Fragile X screening.

“Fragile X is overwhelming in the sense that your world changes as you try to deal with the behavioral issues. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong support system,’’ said Kaplan, a wife and mother of three children. “We want to make it as easy as possible for families facing Fragile X.’’

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New Trailer: Aaron Eckhart in 'Erased'

Looks like Aaron Eckhart has taken a cue from Taken with his new action-thriller Erased, playing a former CIA agent who must protect his alienated teen from killers looking to have him and his family, well, erased. Watch the edge-of-your-seat trailer…

Pics: Stars Who Have Played the President

In theaters May 10 (and On Demand April 5), Erased finds Eckhart as ex-CIA operative Ben Logan who moves to Belgium with his teen daughter (played by Liana Liberato) to make a fresh start. When his workplace literally disappears and forces conspire to erase his involvement as head of security for the company, he embarks on a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in an effort to uncover the truth behind the corporate conspiracy. Olga Kurylenko also stars as a CIA agent assigned to track Logan down, no matter what the costs.

Video: Eckhart is the Prez Under Fire in 'Olympus'

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Tavern on the Green re-opening in jeopardy

Tavern on the Green is running out of green before it even re-opens, The Post has learned.

The cash crunch threatens the expected fall re-launch of the Central Park restaurant, sources said.

Philadelphia-based restaurateurs Jim Caiola and David Salama need more dough to cover operating costs at the landmark eatery when it re-opens later this year after their financial backer tightened the purse strings.

“Their backer is not coming up with as much [cash] as they expected, so they are looking for extra funds,” confirmed Steven Hall, a rep for Caiola’s and Salama’s Emerald Green Group.

A hospitality industry insider with access to big bucks confirmed he was approached by Emerald Green to help find an alternative cash supply.

Emerald Green’s backer is Capital Spring, several sources said, which provides debt, equity and “creative capital” for restaurants and franchises, according to its Web site.

Emerald Green aims to open Tavern’s doors to the public in November or December. The city is spending $10 million to restore the buildings to their original 19th century state with new landscaping and an outdoor terrace, while Emerald Green is paying for up to $10 million of interior work.

Under a 20-year license agreement with the Parks Department, Emerald Green will pay the city the greater of $1 million or 6 percent of revenue the first year, rising to $1 million or 15 percent annually in later years.

The city still plans to turn the keys over to Emerald Green in July, and sources emphasized the cash shortfall has not interfered with the company’s ongoing construction and cooperation with city agencies.

But the problem could hit home when the Philly boys have to start paying for food, labor and utilities, which can be tens of millions of dollars annually.

Although smaller than the old Tavern, the new eatery will still have 600 seats indoors and out.

The new Tavern is expected to have about 120 employees compared with 400 in the past. Although Emerald Green has a peace pact with Local 6 of the New York Hotel Trades Council, which previously represented Tavern employees, a new contract still must be nailed down.

Representatives for Capital Spring at 950 Third Ave. didn’t return calls.

Reached at her Brooklyn home, Katy Sparks, the 3-star chef who will run Tavern on the Green’s kitchen, said she “knew nothing” about any financing issue, adding that she had been at the Tavern site just last week.

Through their rep, Caiola and Salama declined to comment.

Asked to comment on the financing glitch, Parks Dept. spokesman Arthur Pincus said only, “The city’s work on Tavern on the Green is continuing as is the concessionaire’s.”

The looming cash crunch is only the latest embarrassment for the Bloomberg administration at the site.

Tavern, once the nation’s highest-grossing restaurant, has been dark for three years since the city refused to renew Jennifer LeRoy’s license. An attempt by Boathouse Café owner Dean Poll to re-open it crashed and burned over union issues.

Last summer, the city surprised the restaurant world by choosing little-known Emerald Green, which runs a small Philadelphia creperie, to bring Tavern on the Green back to life.

In addition to questions raised about Emerald Green’s limited track record, Post City Hall Bureau Chief David Seifman revealed that Salama is the brother-in-law of former Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey, a close pal of Mayor Bloomberg and a top executive at Bloomberg LP.

The city denied favoritism played any role in choosing Emerald Green. Comptroller John Liu, after saying his office would “investigate” the selection, signed off the license agreement last fall.

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Don’t get too personal on LinkedIn

Have you ever received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone you didn’t know or couldn’t remember?

A few weeks ago, Josh Turner encountered this situation. The online request to connect came from a businessman on the opposite coast of the United States. It came with a short introduction that ended with “Let’s go Blues!” a reference to Turner’s favorite hockey team in St. Louis that he had mentioned in his profile. “It was a personal connection … that’s building rapport.”

LinkedIn is known for being the professional social network where members expect you to keep buttoned-down behavior and network online like you would at a business event. With more than 200 million registered users, the site facilitates interaction as a way to boost your stature, gain a potential customer or rub elbows with a future boss.

But unlike most other social networking sites, LinkedIn is all about business — and you need to take special care that you act accordingly. As in any workplace, the right amount of personal information sharing could be the foot in the door, say experts. The wrong amount could slam it closed.

“Anyone in business needs a professional online presence,’’ says Vanessa McGovern, the VP of Business Development for the Global Institute for Travel Entrepreneurs and a consultant to business owners on how to use LinkedIn. But they should also heed LinkedIn etiquette or risk sending the wrong messages.

One of the biggest mistakes, McGovern says is getting too personal — or not personal enough.

Sending a request to connect blindly equates to cold calling and likely will lead nowhere. Instead, it should come with a personal note, an explanation of who you are, where you met, or how the connection can benefit both parties, McGovern explains.

Your profile should get a little personal, too, she says. “Talk about yourself in the first person and add a personal flair — your goals, your passion … make yourself seem human.”

Beyond that, keep your LinkedIn posts, invitations, comments and photos professional, McGovern says.

If you had a hard day at the office or your child just won an award, you may want to share it with your personal network elsewhere — but not on LinkedIn.

“This is not Facebook. Only share what you would share at a professional networking event,” she says.

Another etiquette pitfall on LinkedIn is the hit and run — making a connection and not following up.

At least once a week, Ari Rollnick, a principal in kabookaboo, an integrated marketing agency in Coral Gables, gets a request to connect with someone on LinkedIn that he has never met or heard of before. The person will have no connections in common and share no information about why they want to build a rapport.

“I won’t accept. That’s a lost opportunity for them,” Rollnick says.

He approaches it differently. When Rollnick graduated from Emory with an MBA in 2001, he had a good idea that his classmates would excel in the business world. Now, Rollnick wanted to find out just where they went and reestablish a connection.

With a few clicks, he tracked down dozens of them on LinkedIn, requested a connection, and was back on their radar. Then came the follow-up — letting them know through emails, phone calls and posts that he was creating a two-way street for business exchange. “Rather than make that connection and disappearing , I let them know I wanted to open the door to conversation.”

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More misconduct allegations arise at Citizens

TALLAHASSEE --
In an attempt to clear its name after a series of scandals involving corporate misconduct and improper spending, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. released a laundry list of 474 internal complaints Wednesday.

While Citizens released the documents to prove that it has properly handled allegations of misconduct in recent years, the move also shined an embarrassing light on much of the company’s internal dirty laundry. The list of complaints reads like a trove of office sex affairs, corporate corruption, fraud, workplace pornography, discrimination, theft and other allegations. In at least one case, a Citizens employee swiped his corporate credit card at a strip club. Names of employees were not disclosed. But law enforcement authorities were alerted in cases of possible alleged criminal activity.

“This review is an important piece of Citizens’ ongoing efforts to strengthen internal policies to ensure that our employees are held to the highest standards of corporate integrity,” said company president Barry Gilway, in a statement. The company stated that “all complaints were addressed and corrective action taken in accordance with Citizens’ policies in place at the time.”

The release of the complaint information is the latest dustup for Citizens, which is still reeling from revelations about lavish corporate spending, large raises for executives and various allegations of impropriety.

Gilway has said that he was immediately hit with news of various corporate scandals when he joined the company last June. After taking what he called “a bashing in the press,” Gilway asked Citizens’ Internal Auditor, Joe Martins, to look over the company’s handling of misconduct allegations. Martins — who disbanded the company’s Corporate Integrity Office and gutted one of its most scathing reports — found that Citizens had handled internal complaints well over the last five years.

“Where we found weaknesses, we are making necessary improvements to strengthen our complaints and disciplinary procedures,” Martins said in a statement. Many of the complaints involved run-of-the-mill employee grievances, such as a supervisor “wearing too much cologne.”

But others involved more serious allegations, including fraud and improper gifts from vendors who do business with Citizens, a multibillion-dollar company backed by state taxpayers.

The release comes as Citizens is looking to reform itself after a series of scandals. Over the past year, the Herald/Times has documented evidence of luxurious business trips, drunken exploits on company retreats, large raises for executives and the abrupt firing of four internal investigators. Many of the misconduct allegations surfaced as Citizens was raising rates on homeowners and reducing coverage.

Before it was disbanded, the Office of Corporate Integrity was responsible for investigating many of the complaints listed in Wednesday’s document release.

The abrupt firing of the OCI investigators — who had recently discovered evidence of misconduct by Citizens’ highest executives — led to allegations that the company was seeking to cover up the group’s findings. In addition to huge severance packages for disgraced executives, the investigators found that Citizens had mishandled several internal complaints and shown favoritism to some employees, including top execs.

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My Strange Addiction: Audrey's Stuffed Lamb

27-year-old Audrey shares a "spiritual connection" with her stuffed lamb.

The young woman, who carries a pint-sized powder blue plush everywhere she goes, is profiled in Wednesday's My Strange Addiction.

Pics: Star Sightings

"The lamb is my best friend," she explains of the animal who's been her companion for five years. "He is really just carefree, adventurous and awesome."

Audrey's sister, however, is not a fan.

"[Her] relationship with the lamb is strange," says her concerned sibling Ansley. "She's in her '20s and she's got a stuffed animal that she wants to take around."

Related: 'Addicted To Fame'

Watch a sneak preview in the player above!

This episode of My Strange Addiction, also featuring a woman addicted to eating deodorant sticks, airs tonight at 10pm on TLC.

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Fortune teller pleads not guilty in $150K scheme

Manhattan prosecutors have thrown the book at a pretty Greenwich Village fortune teller, charging her in a 16-count indictment with scheming to steal $150,000 from two customers.

Brunette beauty Sylvia Mitchell, 38, turned heads in a trimly-tailored black cocktail dress as she pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to scheme to defraud and grand larceny.

"This defendant masquerades as a fortune teller, swindling people out of tens of thousands of dollars," prosecutor James Bergamo told the judge of Mitchell, who works out of the "Zena Clairvoyant" shop on Seventh Avenue.

Steven Hirsch

Sylvia Mitchell in court.

Mitchell is accused of stealing more than $120,000 from one customer, Singapore-native Lee Choong, 40, by taking her money in exchange for "cleansing" the woman of "bad spirits." The second victim allegedly lost some $28,000.

Even in Central Booking after her arrest this month, Mitchell couldn't help engaging in a little pro-bono clairvoyance, according to police statements released by officials following today's brief court appearance.

"Do you have kids?" she asked one cop. "I knew you had too boys," she added, knowingly.

Defense lawyer Joseph Murray told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro that he will seek to try the two cases separately.

"This indictment is not worth the paper it is printed on and I look forward to defending my client against this smear campaign being perpetrated against her by the NYPD, and the Manhattan DA's office," the lawyer told The Post after court.

Investigators took "desperate efforts to convince previously happy and satisfied clients of Ms. Mitchell that they are really not happy and are actually crime victims," he complained.

Mitchell remains free on no bail and is due back in court in May.

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Appeal court says dispute over island is Bahamian issue

The ownership of a private island in the Bahamas that was previously a retreat of the late, prominent South Florida designer James Wallace Tutt III — and which has been at the center of a five-year legal dispute — is now in the hands of the Bahamian court.

The Third District Court of Appeal in Miami on Wednesday affirmed three lower court judges’ decisions that the matter has to be decided in the Bahamas and not in Miami.

Tutt, an interior designer and developer whose elegant style attracted celebrity clients including Cher, Gianni Versace, Robert De Niro and Diane von Furstenberg, died in 2010 at age 53 on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. His death was apparently heart related, according to a statement from his family at the time.

Tutt moved to South Florida in the 1980s after working as a lawyer and builder in Washington, D.C.

Here, he gained notoriety for transforming the mansion of the late Italian designer Versace into Casa Casuarina, a South Beach icon.

Tutt and his life partner, Don Purdy, moved to Harbour Island in 2002, where they transformed a 1940s home into a luxury 10-room hotel, Rock House.

Tutt also bought Caribe Cay, a three-acre private island with a home, off Harbour Island, as a retreat.

In 2006, Tutt agreed to sell the island to Guy Mitchell, an investor with a home in Coral Gables, said Tutt’s longtime lawyer Stuart Sobel, a partner in Siegfried, Rivera, Lerner, De la Torre & Sobel in Coral Gables.

Over several months, Mitchell paid $2.9 million of the $2.925 million purchase price but never took title to the island for reasons that were never clear, Sobel said.

Mitchell, who had real estate investments in New York, ran into financial trouble, and two companies that had judgments totaling $57 million against him tried to seize his assets — including either the Caribe Cay property or the proceeds from its sale.

Lawsuits followed and have waged on for years, ultimately resulting in the appeal court’s decision.

“We’re looking forward to delivering the deed to whichever entity the Bahamian court decides is entitled,” said Sobel, who has represented Tutt’s estate in the litigation. “As the court wrote, while the facts were complex and convoluted, the issues were really simple and always have been.”

Calls to several attorneys representing the appellants were not returned.

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