Wednesday, September 15, 2010

'There's No Good Money in Teaching'

Well, I guess if there's no good money to be made as a New York City teacher then you turn to selling arms to Hamas and Hezbollah. Seems like an easy way to supplement your income.
He's graduated to gun running.

A former Stuyvesant HS teacher was busted last night for selling high-powered weapons to undercover operatives he thought were connected to Middle East terror organizations, The Post has learned.

Theophilus Burroughs wet his pants when he was slapped with cuffs at a Bronx warehouse, where he was arrested in a sting operation, law-enforcement sources said. The seats on a van waiting to transport him to the 49th Precinct had to be lined with plastic.

The arrest caps a yearlong investigation that saw Burroughs allegedly negotiate the sale of firearms -- including AK-47s, assault rifles with scopes and .40-caliber guns -- during "deals" with informants in which he praised Hamas and Hezbollah and suggested killing cops and Jews, sources said.

"There's no good money in teaching," Burroughs once griped.

Burroughs, 49, a former Marine from Newark, was on unpaid medical leave from the Department of Education.

He showed up at the Westchester Square warehouse expecting to collect a cool $10,000 for a pair of night-vision goggles, two bulletproof vests and 200,000 counterfeit cigarette stamps, a source said.

Burroughs was instead hauled away by city and state tax agents, and investigators from the Bronx DA's Office.

He faces a slew of charges, including weapons possession and forgery, the source said.

Burroughs began his teaching career as a sub in 1992, and taught music at Stuyvesant in 2002 and 2003.

He went on unpaid medical leave from a Brooklyn high school in September 2009 -- around the time he first went to the Bronx warehouse, where he allegedly bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of untaxed cigarettes from informants, sources said.

But he soon set his sights on a more deadly deal, allegedly proposing firearm sales on his third visit.

He later referred to Hamas as "my people" and declared, "Hezbollah good, Hezbollah strong," a source said.

On another occasion, the informants gave him a Koran and said they wanted to do "something big." He suggested they blow up a police station, a police car or the Jewish Community Center on Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street, the source said.
Naturally he's still on the NYC payroll, yet to be fired. He should be happy he's not a NJ Transit worker who ripped out pages of the Koran.

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