The retired NYPD sergeant charged with robbing a bank because of heavy debts recently did extensive work on his house and pool — less than two years after forking over fistfuls of cash to his ex-wife, sources and neighbors said yesterday.
“She cleaned him out,” a source close to Thomas Feeney said of his ex-wife, Joanne, with whom he continues to battle for custody of the couple’s two daughters.
Despite that, neighbors said Feeney, who has since remarried, recently completed a major landscaping project on the grounds of his Smithtown, LI, home and had relined his swimming pool. “That’s a luxury item, so it didn’t look like he was having any money problems,” one neighbor said.
Feeney, 46, told Suffolk County police he walked into a Roslyn Savings Bank in Huntington Station with a gun Tuesday because of crushing credit-card debt.
“It’s well over $100,000,” said department spokesman Detective Sgt. Robert Doyle. “It’s a lot of money for a retired cop.”
Sources close to Feeney said he had worked in recent years as a security guard at strip clubs like Scores, but it was unclear what other work he had.
Feeney’s ex-wife declined to comment, but her husband said she planned to press for custody of both girls following Feeney’s arrest. Feeney’s divorce attorney did not return calls.
Cops caught up to Feeney after a bank employee got a partial license-plate number from the ex-cop’s car and they pulled him over just two miles away.