Bookkeeper testifies about checks in Brooks trial

According to a report by the Long Island newspaper Newsday, a federal prosecutor charged Wednesday that David Brooks used a front company to illegally siphon off millions of dollars from his body-armor business to pay for his stable of more than 100 harness horses.

 

The Newsday story states that at Wednesday’s trial in US Federal Court in Central Islip, NY, a bookkeeper for Tactical Armor Products (TAP) was brought to the stand as a government witness. The witness, Elinore Kaye, was asked about 100 people and companies, including vets, trainers, grooms and other vendors, who received TAP checks.

 

Brooks’s attorneys have argued that TAP was actually a private company owned by Terry Brooks (Brooks’s former wife) and that written authorizations to issue checks were initialed or signed off on by lower-level employees of TAP, not David Brooks. The government alleges that David Brooks was in control of TAP.

 

Brooks is charged with fraud and obstruction of justice in various schemes that resulted in looting DHB of about $190 million.