When they searched her place, they saw she was a schemer. Not a trace of doubt, in cops' minds.
The wife of singer Micky Dolenz, frontman for the made-for-tv '60s rock-band The Monkees, has been arrested on charges that she was monkeying around with a housing program in New York City.
Authorities in the city's Department of Investigation say Donna Quinter illegally received nearly $137,000 in government rental subsidies for her Manhattan apartment at the Ruppert Yorkville Towers. The subsidies were intended for middle-income families.
Quinter, 54, neglected to disclose that she was sharing the apartment with a friend, investigators said. And that friend -- a flight attendant -- was also a paying roommate, who had been living in the apartment since at least 2003.
Of course, those minor details were omitted from lease renewals and related documents, officials said. She also didn't tell anyone that she had married Dolenz and was living primarily in a gated community outside Los Angeles, they added.
“This tenant, with a residence in California, also enjoyed a great deal on a terrific apartment in Manhattan, courtesy of a public housing subsidy that she obtained by fraud, according to the criminal complaint," DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said in a statement. "Law abiding New Yorkers struggling to pay their rents and mortgages cannot afford to subsidize cheaters who abuse public housing resources to support privileged lifestyles.”
Micky Dolenz may have thought love was out to get him -- that's the way it seemed after he got divorced from his first two wives. Then he and Quinter tied the knot in a private ceremony in California in 2002 -- and for her sake, let's hope that he couldn't leave her if he tried.
Quinter surrendered to authorities early Friday and was expected to be arraigned in a Manhattan court later in the afternoon.
Her lawyer didn't immediately return a phone call.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office is prosecuting the case against Quinter, who was charged with second-degree grand larceny. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison.
The city discovered the alleged fraud as a result of an investigation initiated in 2008 to make sure rental subsidies were going to their intended recipients.
One of The Monkees' most memorable hits was "I'm a Believer," which was actually written by Neil Diamond.
