Only in my city would someone actually try and roll a dead man down the block to cash his check...*sigh*  Can't blame this one on my people!!

Charges dropped against men in dead pal check-cashing scheme 
By MELISSA GRACE AND LARRY McSHANE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Dumb and Dumber are free and clear.

The dimwitted duo busted in the "Weekend at Bernie's" stunt of rolling a dead friend through Hell's Kitchen to cash his last Social Security check were cleared Tuesday of all charges.

After hearing the news, defendant David Daloia insisted Virgilio Cintron was alive during his last ride along Ninth Ave. - and then admitted lugging a comatose Cintron to cash another check just days earlier.

"He had been comatose for days upon days," said the 65-year-old ex-construction worker. "I carried him down the stairs a week before."

Prosecutors were forced to drop the charges because two autopsies could not determine Cintron's exact time of death - raising the possibility he was alive when the bizarre Jan. 8 jaunt began.

His roommate, James O'Hare, found Cintron inside their W.52nd St. apartment that afternoon. Rather than get help, authorities say, he and Daloia decided to help themselves.

The two were accused of dressing the corpse in a pair of pants, a T-shirt and sneakers before loading him into a wheeled chair in a bid to cash his $355 check.

The scam came complete with moments of black comedy: when the pair couldn't get Cintron's pants pulled completely up, they simply threw a jacket over his lap, officials said.

Cintron's body flopped from side to side, with his friends trying to keep him upright, as the chair careened though Hell's Kitchen before a crowd of disbelieving onlookers.

The defendants were arrested at the Pay-O-Matic check cashing store when NYPD Detective Travis Rapp looked up from his lunch in a Ninth Ave. restaurant and spotted them.

Cintron died of natural causes, the medical examiner determined.

Daloia and O'Hare - charged with two felonies and two misdemeanors, including failure to properly dispose of a body - were overwhelmed by the resulting attention.

"I thought Britney Spears took her pants down again," Daloia said outside court. He also acknowledged that perhaps the check-cashing plan wasn't thought all the way through.

"I've been accused of being the stupidest guy on the planet," he said. "Was it stupid? Yes."

Daloia, scruffy in a blue windbreaker and jeans, and his mustached pal O'Hare appeared in court with their hair slicked back. Both expressed their remorse for the loss of Cintron.

"I loved the guy," O'Hare said. "He was like a brother."