A man first exposed by The Post for collecting huge sums of money on behalf of slain cops’ families – and giving them almost none of it – was busted yesterday by the feds on fraud charges.
Justin White was charged with running a phony charity called the Police Survivors Fund – which paid out only 5 percent of the money gathered by his pushy telemarketers.
White, 65, was released on $250,000 bond in Manhattan federal court.
The feds say he collected more than $440,000 since late 1999, but paid out only $14,500 to the families of officers killed in the line of duty.
After Sept. 11, his telemarketers allegedly changed their sales pitch to include lines like: “a lot of people who feel very strongly about what happened . . . are donating $911 to commemorate the day of terrorism,” prosecutors charge.
White served five years of probation in the 1980s for trying to defraud small businesses by selling them ads in a phony police newspaper.
The Post published an exposé of White and other questionable fund-raisers last June, even before his “charity” got a boost in contributions from the terror attacks.
Officials say he collected nearly $180,000 in the three months after the attacks. In all that time, he issued just one check – for $10,000 to the family of an officer killed at the Twin Towers.
“Justin White lined his pockets with donations from well-meaning people who opened their hearts and their wallets to assist the families of slain police officers,” said FBI Assistant Director Kevin Donovan.
The Queens resident faces up to five years in prison if convicted.