With 10 extra officers from law enforcement agencies across the East End on patrol, a sweep designed to snare driving while intoxicated suspects netted 11 arrests Saturday night into Sunday morning across East Hampton Town.

According to East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo, one extra officer came from each of the following departments: Quogue Village, Southampton Riverhead, and Shelter Island Towns, Suffolk County, and the Suffolk County Park Police. In addition, four officers from East Hampton's department were added to the patrols.

"They're not required to take regular calls for service," the chief said Monday. Instead, they focus strictly on traffic law enforcement, making stops for infractions, and usually just writing a summons.

All of the D.W.I. charges resulting from the arrests were at the misdemeanor level.

Ten of those arrests appeared to be the direct result of the operation, which employed saturation patrols, in which officers concentrate on busy thoroughfares where stops can be safely made.

The one exception was the arrest of a Shelter Island man who was involved in a one-car rollover accident on Route 114 Saturday night. Police said that Michael Earley, 23, was drunk at the time of the accident. After his arrest, he was taken to town police headquarters in Wainscott. There, he took a breath test, which police said gave a reading of .20 of 1 percent, a high enough blood-alcohol content to trigger a raised charge of aggravated D.W.I.

East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky presided over the arraignments in the town's justice court Sunday morning, a process that took almost three hours. He set Mr. Earley's bail at $1,500, which Mr. Earley said he would not be able to post.

The professions of those arrested during the sweep were a true cross-section of East Hampton during the summer: a graduate school student, a civil engineer, a restaurant manager, an accountant with a major New York accounting firm, two employees of local landscaping companies, a newspaper deliveryman, an executive assistant at an international banking firm, a luxury brand marketing consultant, a recent university graduate, and a mate on a local ferry.

Edward Burke Jr. of Edward Burke Jr. and Associates, received an early morning call Sunday from a friend of one of the defendants being arraigned. Mr. Burke, who is usually seen at the courthouse in business suits, drove there straight from the gym, wearing sweats and shorts. He was unaware that, besides his client, there were 11 other defendants waiting to be arraigned, none of whom had an attorney on hand. (The 12th arraignment was on a harassment charge stemming from a fight in Montauk.) "I'm not dressed like an attorney, but I swear I am one," he said to the friends of one of those.

In the end, Mr. Burke stood in for all 12 arraignments, with at least a couple indicating they would be retaining his services going forward.

One of the two women arrested sobbed, off and on, throughout the process. "This is my first time at this rodeo, hopefully my last," she said to an officer who was trying to console her, while she waited on the prisoner's bench.

When Justice Tekulsky told the woman she would have to post $300 bail, because she has no ties to the community, she answered that her money was at her Montauk summer rental and she had been unable to reach her housemates. As tears welled up in her eyes, Mr. Burke pulled $300 from his wallet and told her he would post the bail. "Thank you," she said, hugging him, still crying.

In what is a sharp contrast to many recent D.W.I. arrests on the South Fork, all 11 arrested consented to take the Intoxilyzer 9000 breath test. For several of them, that choice will likely prove much to their benefit, since their blood-alcohol readings were just over the legal limit. A low reading and no prior history of alcohol-related driving offenses almost always results in a plea-bargained driving with ability impaired by alcohol charge, a simple violation with no criminal record as an aftermath.

Aside from Mr. Earley, only one other defendant had a reading high enough to trigger the raised charge of aggravated drunken driving, according to the police. Zachary Weiss, 22, of Avon, Conn., had a reading of .20. Any reading of .18 or higher triggers the aggravated charge. "I am troubled by two things," Justice Tekulsky said during Mr. Weiss's arraignment, "that a person of your age would have a reading of .20, and your lack of ties to the community." He set bail at $1,000, which was posted.

One defendant had a prior conviction at the driving while ability impaired violation level. Zachary Zweig, 35, of Miami Beach and New York City, whose said his family has had a house here since he was born, had a reading of .13. Bail was set at $1,000, which was posted.

A South African man, Mark Rix, 30, who has made East Hampton Town his home the past couple of years was said by police to have blown a .16 at his breath test, twice the legal limit. He was released on $500 bail.

Others arrested during the sweep were Alphonso Paredes-Encalada, 37, of Springs, Jonathon Papaik, 31, who is staying in Amagansett, Marco Loja of East Hampton, and Edy Mer Monroy-Quintero of Springs.

Three of those arrested allegedly had blood-alchohol readings just over the legal limit. Elizabeth Anne Phillipp of New York, and Denise Scala, 44, of Edison, N.J., both had readings of .08, while Stephen Lampard, 34, of Port Washington was said to have a .09. A reading of .08 is the threshold to be considered intoxicated. None of the three have criminal records; all are almost certainly going to be allowed to plead down to a violation-level D.W.A.I. "The goal is to leave this without a criminal record," Mr. Burke was heard telling one defendant.

"Our patrols are actively seeking out D.W.I.s. The safety of our citizens is paramount," Chief Sarlo said. Visitors and residents should expect more such patrols in the coming weeks. The message: "Don't drink and drive," the chief said.

A truck caught fire on Montauk Highway just west of the Hither Hills overlook in Montauk on Monday afternoon, briefly stopping traffic on the busy stretch of road. 

The Montauk Fire Department responded to find the truck fully engulfed in flames just before 4 p.m. The driver had pulled over on the side of the road. No one was hurt. 

Traffic was diverted down Cemetery Road and Old Montauk Highway until the flames were extinguished. 

No further information was available.

This was the second car fire in as many days. On Sunday evening, an older car was also destroyed after its engine erupted in flames on Abram's Landing Road in Amagansett, near Montauk Highway. 

The man East Hampton Village Police charged with drunken driving following a crash Sunday afternoon that left his three passengers in critical condition was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court Tuesday and later released from police headquarters after his wife posted $10,000 bail.

His head bowed, dressed in a blue hospital gown, Jungsik Lee, 60, of Elmhurst propped himself up on crutches. Though his right knee was wrapped in what appeared to be a soft cast, he declined an offer to be seated during the arraignment.

"I want to advise both the people and the defense attorney that I was present at the scene of the accident," East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky said as he began the proceedings. Justice Tekulsky is a longtime volunteer with the East Hampton Fire Department's heavy rescue squad. "However, when I arrived, the defendant was not in the car. I did participate in cutting the passenger out from the rear door," he said, explaining that he remained impartial as to the criminal case before him.

Two of the passengers had been flown to Stony Brook University Hospital after the crash, while the third was taken to Southampton Hospital with Mr. Lee, but was transferred to Stony Brook when his condition worsened.

Mr. Lee told Justice Tekulsky that he had come to Montauk to go fishing Sunday morning with his three friends. Mr. Lee, who appeared shaken, spoke in broken English.

Rob Archer, an assistant district attorney, asked bail to be set at $10,000, pointing out the possibility of additional charges being added, given the severity of the injuries to the passengers in the car. Justice Tekulsky agreed on the bail amount, with a caveat: "I would suggest the D.A.'s office should upgrade the charges as soon as possible," if that is its inclination. The Suffolk County Vehicular Crimes unit has been in constant contact with the East Hampton Village police detectives handling the case since Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Lee consented to have his blood drawn in order to test his blood alcohol content. According to Justice Tekulsky, that number came back as .11 of 1 percent. A reading of .08 or higher triggers a driving while intoxicated charge.

Mr. Lee's wife was seated in the courtroom, along with a family friend. The wife spoke no English. When told what the bail amount was, she went to the side courtroom, where she counted out $10,000 from her handbag, with two clerks each counting the stack of $100 bills before filling out a receipt. In the meantime, Mr. Lee had been taken back to police headquarters. The friend, who identified himself only as Mr. Han, said Mr. Lee was an occasional drinker who would drink only two or three beers.

With the bail paid, Ms. Lee took the receipt and, along with Mr. Han, drove to police headquarters, from where Mr. Lee was released. The three then began the long drive back to Elmhurst.

An online petition posted by Montauk’s Ditch Plains Association on Monday afternoon, asking East Hampton Town planners and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to rebuff an application that would drastically change the footprint of the hamlet’s East Deck Motel, had gathered 860 signatures as of Wednesday.

The petition, addressed to Reed Jones, chairman of the town’s planning board, asks the board to “Deny ED40’s special permit and the D.E.C. permit for membership club conversion, or require a N.Y.S. mandated environmental impact statement due to negative environmental and character of community impacts.”

The Ditch Plains Association was started in the fall and received not-for-profit status in June. It now has 300 active members, said Laura Michaels, a board member. It has met weekly during this “critical period involving the ED40 proposal,” she said.

The association was initially created to deal with erosion issues, but there was always a keen eye on ED40’s redevelopment plan, said Ms. Michaels. Its other directors are John Chimples, Freddy Gold, Connie Cortese, and Lou Cortese.

ED40 is the name of the development group, which is registered as a limited liability corporation in Delaware, a state that does not require the names of shareholders to be made public. Its application states that it would create a “private club” on the site of the old East Deck, with 179 members. A new septic system would be built to handle the waste of up to 537 people, with a daily flow of 5,171 gallons. Some 3,661 cubic yards of fill would be brought in to elevate the system, which would be installed in a known flood zone. There would be an 8,000-square-foot pool with decking, a game room, a spa, a restaurant, and a café. Parking on the site would increase from 36 spaces to 100, with some located underground.

The Concerned Citizens of Montauk organization has already asked that an environmental impact statement be required. In addition to the scope of the renovation, the group worries that ground and surface water would flow north from the site to Lake Montauk, which is already seeing its share of pollution from human and animal-waste runoff. A small beach on the south side of the lake, the part nearest to Ditch Plain, has been closed to swimmers for most of the summer.

Representing ED40 in East Hampton is the Montauk law firm of Biondo and Hammer, whose move to split the ownership into two corporations, in compliance with a town code requirement that such a facility be nonprofit, has been approved by the town attorney’s office.

Alice Houseknecht, the East Deck’s longtime manager, inherited the motel a few years ago. It was sold in the fall for a reported $15 million. At the time of the sale, Ms. Houseknecht said she was confident that the new owners would retain some part of its charm.

The Ditch Plains Association petition can be accessed at ditchplainsassociation.com or on its Facebook page. More than 100 surfers are said to be planning a protest-paddle out on the site on Aug. 30. 

East Hampton Village should create and adopt a resolution pledging to meet its energy needs through renewable sources and reducing its energy consumption, Frank Dalene, chairman of East Hampton Town’s energy sustainability advisory committee, told the village board at its meeting on Friday.

Declaring that “our work has only begun,” Mr. Dalene outlined the town’s recently-adopted goal to meet 100 percent of communitywide electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020 and the equivalent of 100 percent of economywide energy needs, such as electricity, heating, and transportation, with renewable energy sources by 2030.

Richard Lawler, a village board member, introduced Mr. Dalene along with John Botos, of the town’s Natural Resources Department, and Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island. All, including Mr. Lawler, are members of the energy sustainability advisory committee.

“We need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions coming from power and other sectors” in order to mitigate disastrous consequences of climate change, Mr. Raacke told the board. An 80-to-90-percent reduction in those emissions is urgent, he said.

Renewable-energy technologies have advanced sufficiently to be both efficient and cost-effective, Mr. Dalene said, making the town’s goals realistic and achievable. Should proposed installations, including solar farms on town-owned sites and the Deepwater One wind farm to be situated 30 miles offshore, be completed and operational, “we will have more than achieved those goals,” he said. On an individual level, federal, state, and local initiatives, such as financing programs through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, make installation of a solar panel array affordable to homeowners, he added.

Mr. Botos told the board of the town’s outreach plans, which he said will include engaging the public through an “unplug” campaign and a logo design competition in the schools. A section devoted to energy and reducing consumption will be added to the town’s website, he said. He also discussed a statewide initiative in which homeowners can obtain a free energy audit, which includes an analysis and recommendations on reducing energy consumption and waste, and programs including a fast-track solar permitting process and code changes that will speed electric-vehicle supply permits for homeowners. An electric-vehicle charging station should be in place at Town Hall in a month’s time, he said, “to show that the government is embracing this technology.”

“I speak for the entire board when I say we support your goals,” Mr. Lawler told the men, adding that the village has installed solar panels on three of its buildings, reducing its electricity bills by half, and purchased some electric vehicles. “We are in sync with your goals,” he said.

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. asked for an opportunity to look at the proposal in depth. “I assure you, we will somehow come up with a favorable accord,” he said.

In other news from the meeting, public hearings on three proposed laws garnered no public comment and the laws were adopted. One prohibits parking on the north side of Newtown Lane from the intersection of Conklin Terrace west for 20 feet. Another limits parking on the north side of Newtown Lane between Sherrill Road and Conklin Terrace, and from the point 20 feet west of Conklin Terrace west for 300 feet, to two hours between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

The third law amends a section of code pertaining to preservation of dunes, allowing for the placement of beach-compatible sand on land within 150 feet of the south edge of the beach grass along the ocean. Otherwise, digging, dredging, or excavating, or depositing fill or other material in that area is prohibited. The law also prohibits clearing, removing, uprooting, burying, or otherwise damaging vegetation, or replacing it with lawn, sod, or turf in that area. However, the amendment provides an exemption for the construction of elevated pedestrian walkways for noncommercial access to the beach.

A new law requiring East Hampton Town property owners who want to rent out their dwellings to register with the town and provide details about the number of tenants, lease period, and number and size of bedrooms to be occupied, is under discussion by the town board.

Under a preliminary draft presented to the board on Tuesday, prospective landlords would have to provide an affidavit or other documentation that the property complies with all town code provisions, or be subject to an inspection by the building inspector.

Those who do not obtain a rental registration number, which must be used in any advertisements for rent of the property, could be subject to a fine of up to double the amount of rent collected from the premises. Repeat offenders would be fined at least $8,000, and up to $30,000, and could be sentenced to up to six months in jail.

Property owners would be required to reregister whenever a lease period ends.

Michael Sendlenski, a town attorney who prepared the draft legislation, said at the Tuesday town board meeting that the registry would assist the town in enforcement efforts against those who violate town laws against overcrowding and short-term rentals.

The purpose, he said, is to “collect data on the number of bedrooms being used, the number of occupants, and length of stays to correlate with code enforcement complaints.”

Board members said they would seek public comment on the preliminary draft of the law by distributing it to citizens advisory committees, business groups, and real estate concerns.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell suggested the board invite the public to an “informal opinion gathering or comment gathering” session at a board meeting in September or October.

Mr. Sendlenski said he would like to see the law finalized before the start of 2015. The draft legislation will be posted on the town’s website.

John D. Re is lauded by some as an art expert who guided them to important art purchases at discount prices. Others, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has accused him of selling fake Jackson Pollocks for almost $2 million, consider him a thief, peddling forged art and tall tales.

A confidence man or a confident man, Mr. Re, 54, who is from East Hampton, has been called both.

“I consider myself a patriot and a gentleman,” Mr. Re said in a Sept. 14, 2006, East Hampton Star article on a small submarine that he had restored and was piloting up the Atlantic Coast. Mr. Re told The Star, The New York Times, and a host of other reporters intrigued by the vessel that he had purchased the sub, the U.S.S. Deep Quest, on eBay in 2004. He told The New York Times in 2007 that it had been on a back lot at Universal Studios before he bought it for $70,000 and had it restored in Galveston, Tex.

By the time Corey Kilgannon interviewed him for a Nov. 18, 2007, New York Times article, Mr. Re had already completed a long, slow journey up the Atlantic Coast and was keeping the sub in Greenport. “This is just an eccentric thing I’m doing,” Mr. Re said in the 2006 East Hampton Star article, speaking from Hilton Head Island, S.C. He said he had put $1 million into the restoration of the Deep Quest. “It has East Hampton, N.Y., written on the side. A Jet Ski is towing behind, and there’s a 50-caliber deck gun. It’s East Hampton’s first submarine,” Mr. Re said in the interview.

Its history was detailed in that article and several others. According to The Times, “It was built in 1967 by Lockheed and used by the Navy for salvage work, seafloor surveys and mapping. In 1968, it set the United States record for a deep-sea dive submersible at 8,310 feet, planting an American flag on the floor of the Pacific. In 1969, it recovered the flight recorder boxes from two airliners that crashed in the Pacific Ocean. It helped photograph the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic in the 1970s and was decommissioned in 1980.”

All that was true of the U.S.S. Deep Quest, according to Kathleen Edgecomb, a reporter for The Day, a New London paper, but it wasn’t the history of the vessel Mr. Re owned.

“It’s not the real thing. It’s a fake,” Ron Roehmholdt, who was then the exhibits chief for Navy Museums Northwest in Keyport, Wash., told Ms. Edgecomb in an April 2010 article.

Ms. Edgecomb had interviewed Mr. Re after the Deep Quest ran into trouble in the waters near New London. He had been on a pleasure cruise with his wife and two daughters when his seawater pump failed, and had to be towed into the harbor of the Thames River by the Coast Guard. Like several reporters before her, Ms. Edgecomb interviewed Mr. Re about the curious craft.

The story Mr. Re told “raised a lot of red flags for us,” Ms. Edgecomb said last week, recalling the 2010 interview. With New London being home to a naval submarine base, “we have a lot of history buffs here.”

She began making calls, and soon was in touch with Mr. Roehmholdt. “This gentleman bought himself a movie prop,” he said in her Aug. 19, 2010, article. “He’s called us four or five times over the years to ask if we wanted to buy it.”

In fact, Mr. Roehmholdt told The Day, the original U.S.S. Deep Quest has been on display at the museum’s underwater exhibit since the mid-1990s. Mr. Roehmholdt, the winner of Washington State’s million-dollar lottery in 2008, has since retired.

Ms. Edgecomb researched the various articles written about Mr. Re’s sub, as he made the voyage from Galveston to Greenport, where it is currently berthed. The vessel travels at about five and a half knots per hour; the trip took several weeks. In every port he entered on the way north, the local newspapers would interview him. “In each one,” Ms. Edgecomb wrote in 2010, “Re says his ship is the one built by Lockheed in 1967.”

In 2010, after Ms. Edgecomb confronted him with what she had learned, Mr. Re continued to insist he had the legitimate Deep Quest, and said “he has a certificate of authenticity to prove it,” she wrote in 2010. “He said he had it inspected, and Lockheed told him the welds were by Lockheed and the steel was Navy-grade.”

“So they want to call it a movie prop, go ahead, call it a movie prop,” Mr. Re told her. “Can I prove it was the ship that made the historic dives? No. But it’s all good.”

In at least three instances, Mr. Re’s contact with local papers was precipitated by difficulties his craft experienced in the water. According to The Belleair Bee on Aug. 24, 2006, a call for assistance from Mr. Re when the Deep Quest’s generator broke down drew a response from the Clearwater Yacht Club in Florida, inviting Mr. Re to berth his vessel among the yachts.

“It’s the first submarine we’ve had here,” Tom Brusini, general manager of the Clearwater Yacht Club, said in the article. “We welcomed them, and served them lunch.”

While Mr. Re’s account of the sub’s history never varied, the pricetag of the project did. The Island Packet, covering Hilton Head and Beaufort, S.C., and The New York Times reported that it cost him nearly $700,000. The Belleair Bee made it “some $500,000.” Mr. Re told The Day and The Star that it cost $1 million.

He described himself to reporters as an art dealer, but frequently with a twist. For The Star, he was also a martial arts instructor. According to The New York Times, he also had “savings from playing guitar as a sideman in the 1980s for some rock bands.” The Island Packet had him as a former Navy man.

In The Day in 2010, both Mr. Roehmholdt and Barbara Neff, who is in charge of moorings at the pier in New London, applauded Mr. Re’s publicity-drawing craft for its ability to generate public interest in submarines. But his seeming need to mislead about its history struck Ms. Edgecomb as odd, she said last week. One of the biggest red flags in her eyes was the money involved. “How was this guy making his money?” she said she kept asking herself.

Making money, literally, is what first brought John Re to the attention of the police, and reporters. In September of 1995, he was arrested, along with two other men, Geoffrey H. Kennedy, who lived in a neighboring house on Wireless Road in East Hampton, and Brian Huddleston of Brentwood, and charged with printing stacks of $20 bills. Their intent, according to news accounts, was not to pass the bills, but rather to sell them for 25 cents on the dollar.

One of the trio’s first customers was an undercover agent, who agreed to take $10,000 in phony bills in exchange for $2,500 in real cash. The deal was consummated in Brentwood the next day, after which the three were arrested on possession of forged instrument charges. All were eventually sentenced to state prison.

According to The New York Times, when police went to East Hampton, they “found an old Multigraph printer with green ink still wet on its rollers; cans of developer and fixative; photo-engraving plates; stacks of newly printed $20 bills, and several shotguns.”

In addition, The Times said, they confiscated two textbooks borrowed from the East Hampton library: “Photo-Offset Fundamentals” and “Production Planning and Repo Mechanics for Offset Printing.”

As far as the quality of the bills, Samuel Zona of the Secret Service rated the bills a “6 on a 10-point scale,” in the Times article, calling them “passable.”

Sentenced to two and a half to seven years, Mr. Re ended up serving two years at the Riverview correctional facility in Ogdensburg, N.Y.

While there, he filed an appeal to the court, asking for the right to read his pre-sentencing report. While the appeal was denied, it is clear from reading the document, which is on file at the Suffolk County Court complex in Riverside, that Mr. Re spent a good amount of study time putting the appeal together, citing precedents of several cases he thought would help his own.

Released from prison in 1997, Mr. Re began to look for work. One of the businesses he applied to was an East Hampton gallery. The art dealer, who asked that neither he nor the gallery be named, turned him down. Mr. Re returned a couple of months later, asking the gallery owner if he buys paintings and explaining that he had a Picasso.

“He brings it in,” the dealer said Sunday. “I told him, ‘I don’t know where you got this, but take it back; it is not real.’ ” According to the dealer, Mr. Re “insisted it was authentic,” and left the shop.

He returned several weeks later, with two other men. They were carrying three paintings they said were by Winslow Homer. The art dealer told them they, too, were fakes.

“He is a very intelligent guy, a charming guy,” the dealer said. “He could have made a good living out here.”

While the dealer was skeptical, there were many buyers who defended Mr. Re as an art expert and continue to do so to this day. One of those is one of Mr. Re’s first buyers on eBay. In 2000, Mr. Re opened an eBay account using his email address as his ID, which was customary at the time.

In the early days of eBay, there was no differentiation between buyers and sellers in the feedback ratings members left after transactions. Mr. Re built up positive feedback by making a series of purchases beginning on June 20, 2000, with this user ID, which he eventually changed to Hamptons_on_the_water.

In 2001 he began to sell artwork on eBay.

“We love you Jon,” one buyer wrote. “The Picasso is great. You have integrity & honesty. You’re #1.” According to a comment left by Mr. Re, the art work in question had sold on eBay for $2,900.

In the F.B.I. complaint filed in June in the Southern District of New York, Mr. Re is accused of using shill bidders in transactions on eBay.

One of these early buyers, tracked down in upstate New York through eBay, said Monday that he had bought two or three works said to be by Willem de Kooning from Mr. Re in 2001. He would not describe the prices he paid, but according to feedback left after the transactions at least one was for more than $10,000. 

Meredith Savona, an agent for the F.B.I. who specializes in art fraud, said in the June complaint that Mr. Re “had carried out a scheme to defraud purchasers of artwork” from March 2005 to January of this year. The complaint details the alleged sale of almost 60 fake Jackson Pollock paintings for close to $2 million over that period. Mr. Re claimed to have obtained the artwork in 1999 from the basement of an East Hampton woman, Barbara Schulte, who had been in the antiques business with her husband, George. Mr. Schulte had died a few years before that.

“It was the Schulte provenance” that convinced the upstate New York buyer of the artwork’s legitimacy, he said Monday. He spoke on the phone to a woman he still believes was Mrs. Schulte. “She said Re paid for them,” the buyer said. But when he spoke to the woman he knew as Mrs. Schulte a second time, before another purchase, “she recanted,” the buyer said. Mr. Re had told the buyer he’d had a falling out with her, and the buyer believed that this and the fact that she was in a deteriorating mental state due to old age explained her change of story.

The buyer’s understanding was that Mr. Schulte had a collection of de Koonings as well as the Pollocks. “What I remember about the Pollocks is that they were very unusual. They were gouaches,” he said.

“The de Koonings were looked at in the late 1980s. They were brought to Manhattan.” According to the buyer, he was told Mr. Schulte tried to have them authenticated, but was turned away by an expert in the field. The buyer wasn’t bothered by this. He expressed a deep distrust for the established process of authenticating works of art, particularly for the International Foundation for Art Research, which he said is too secretive.

He believes there are probably many works by artists of de Kooning’s and Pollock’s stature that are authentic, but will never be treated as such. “You have to remember, these guys gave their stuff away, for bar bills, for hookers.”

There are two markets for artwork, he believes, the blue-chip market where pieces might go for $300,000 and another for works that have not been authenticated but are real. “Pay $50,000, or $1,500.” He still has the pieces he bought in 2001.

He wasn’t the only one that wrote glowingly of eBay art transactions with Mr. Re. “A lovely painting! Best packing ever!! First-rate seller!!! Thank you!!!!” one happy buyer wrote. “Spectacular work of art!” wrote another. “Outstanding piece, great price, full providence, lightning ship. $21K+ trans,” wrote a third. Mr. Re wrote about one transaction: “Seller very happy with book containing Picasso drawings. $11,600.”

In a telephone conversation recently, Mr. Re said that he had numerous “letters of authenticity” for the Pollock paintings from Mrs. Schulte, that the F.B.I.’s case was weak, and that he would be cleared. He has not returned calls for comment since then. 

In the complaint, Agent Savona said that the low prices for the artwork were a major concern for her. “The prices for the paintings are many multiples below the market prices realized for authentic works by Pollock.”

In the end, the question of authenticity of the works may be irrelevant in the prosecution of Mr. Re.

According to Jerika L. Richardson, senior public affairs officer and director of new media for the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, the Internal Revenue Service has been working in conjunction with the F.B.I. on the case against Mr. Re.

Mr. Re was in East Hampton Town Justice Court on July 17, where he was arraigned on a new charge of felony state income tax fraud in front of East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana. He asked the court to appoint a legal aid attorney, saying he was indigent. “The I.R.S. has basically shut my business down,” he said. “They won’t let me sell anything. They closed my bank, my eBay account, my PayPal account.”

Justice Rana turned to the matter of bail for the state charge. Mr. Re is free on the federal charge after posting a $150,000 bond. Justice Rana pointed out that there could be more state charges pending. The charge on file at the courthouse is for nonpayment of taxes for only one of the years in question and leaves open the possibility of more charges, Justice Rana said.

“Does it matter that the I.R.S. has already arraigned me, and R.O.R.’d me?” Mr. Re asked Justice Rana. She agreed to release Mr. Re, who is also facing several local misdemeanor charges of driving without a license, without forcing him to post additional bail.

Outside the courtroom, he and his wife, Rhonda Re, declined to talk about the current charges.

Lauren Bacall, one of the sirens of Hollywood’s golden age and a Tony Award-winning actress for her work on Broadway, died Tuesday from what has been reported to be a massive stroke at home in New York at the age of 89.

She was a longtime resident of Amagansett, dating back to the 1960s, but sold her house in 1995, according to The New York Times. While here, she was known to shop at Iacono Farm to buy chicken and to stop for a hotdog in Manorville on the way home to New York City. Her famous voice was also used in radio and television advertisements for the Hampton Jitney. Guild Hall gave her a lifetime achievement award for performing arts in 1990. She continued to visit and support local arts institutions even in the years after she sold her house.

Ms. Bacall's film career spanned more than a half century, beginning with “To Have and Have Not” in 1944 and more recently included the film “The Walker,” which was shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2007.

After a love affair that began on set during that first film with Humphrey Bogart, she married the actor and raised two children with him until he died in 1957. When they met on set, he was in his 40s and she was just 19. 

Along with igniting the romance, the film launched her career and several of her trademarks, including “the look," featuring her downcast face with eyes turned upward, some rather famous lines, and her hoarse, low-registered voice, encouraged by the film’s director Howard Hawkes by having the actress read aloud for long periods to tire her vocal chords. 

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve,” her character says to Bogart’s. “You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

The two actors went on to star in several other films together including “The Big Sleep,” “Dark Passage,” and “Key Largo.” 

Other acclaimed films she starred in were “How to Marry a Millionaire,” “Written on the Wind,” “Designing Woman,” “Sex and the Single Girl,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” and “Pret a Porter.” 

Her Broadway credits include two Tony Award-winning performances in “Applause” and “Woman of the Year.” She received an honorary Oscar in 2009. The same year she played herself being robbed by one of the characters in the HBO television series “The Sopranos.”

She and Bogart were outspoken critics of the black-listing of those suspected of being Communist party members or sympathizers. They signed a petition protesting the committee’s activities against the film industry and visited Washington to publicly speak out against it. Later, however, Bogart recanted, after pressure from his studio, and Ms. Bacall followed suit.

After her first marriage, she was engaged to Frank Sinatra, but married Jason Robards in 1961. The couple divorced in 1969 after having one son together, Sam Robards.

Part one of her two-part autobiography “By Myself” won a National Book Award in 1985. In addition to her acting achievements, she had the distinction of being den mother to the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, a group that then consisted of Bogart, Sinatra, David Niven, Swifty Lazar, and Rex Harrison. The name became more famously associated with a later group, headed by Sinatra, who hung out in Las Vegas in the 1960s. That group included Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Dean Martin. 

Born in Brooklyn on Sept. 16, 1924, her given name was Betty Jean Perske. Her parents were William and Natalie Perske, who were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Romania. After her parents’ divorce, her mother changed her last name back to Bacal, part of her maiden name. Ms. Bacall kept the name but added the additional “L” because she once said it was easier to pronounce correctly. Howard Hawks, the director who discovered the actress and put her in “To Have and Have Not,” gave her the name Lauren, but friends still called her Betty.

She attended school in Tarrytown, N.Y., and Manhattan, graduating at 15. She worked as a model and usher before being discovered in an issue of Harper’s Bazaar. She is survived by her three children: Stephen Bogart, her daughter Leslie Bogart, and Mr. Robards, who is an actor, and six grandchildren.

Nathaniel H. Miller, an East Hampton Town Trustee accused of choking another man at a Maidstone Park beach barbecue last month, was cleared of the charge Thursday in East Hampton Town Justice Court.

"At the end of the day," said Daniel G. Rodgers, Mr. Miller's attorney, "baymen's justice was served."

Mr. Miller had been arrested by East Hampton Town police on July 12 after he placed a chokehold on Clint Bennett, a town highway department employee, who was also at the barbecue. Witnesses at the time reported that the two men had been arguing when Mr. Bennett challenged Mr. Miller by saying, "Do something about it," leading to fight.

Mr. Rodgers said the dispute was rooted in an incident dating back to 2011, when Mr. Bennett was charged, and later convicted, of arson for setting fire to a dory belonging to a fellow bayman, Paul Lester.

Mr. Bennett was convicted of the crime, and was sentenced on May 4, 2011, to 20 days in jail, as well as being required to pay $8,161 in restitution to Mr. Lester. Mr. Rodgers said Mr. Bennett failed to make that payment in full, leading to the dispute with other baymen. At least 25 people — friends, family members, and fellow town trustees — showed up in the courtroom Thursday in support of Mr. Miller.

"Our office has investigated the incident, and we do not feel we could meet the evedential threshold to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," Sean McDonnell, the attorney prosecuting the case, told East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, who then dismissed the case.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Miller thanked his supporters for coming. "I am very sorry this all happened," he said.

A hastily scheduled East Hampton Town Board meeting will be held next week to address the concerns of many East End residents about noise from aircraft that use East Hampton Airport.

Following meetings last week in Bridgehampton and Peconic and on Shelter Island, town officials anticipated that a large number of people would come to speak out about airport noise at the town board's regularly scheduled meeting Thursday evening, but, with 13 public hearings on unrelated issues already on the agenda, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Monday morning that he was concerned that an overflow crowd would have nowhere to sit and many would not be able to fit into the modest Town Hall meeting room.

"In order to adequately host that many people who want to address the airport noise issue, we're scheduling this special meeting so people can attend," Mr. Cantwell said on Monday.

The airport noise meeting is slated for Aug. 27 at 6:30 p.m. It will be held at LTV Studios at 75 Industrial Road in Wainscott, which has more space than the Town Hall meeting room.

Kathleen Cunningham, the chairwoman of the Quiet Skies Coalition, commended Mr. Cantwell for creating a special meeting just to address airport noise.

"All over the East End, our neighbors and colleagues are being tortured, particularly by helicopter noise," Ms. Cunningham said in a press release.

The meeting comes just as recent numbers show flights in and out of the airport have grown. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 4, helicopter traffic jumped by nearly 44 percent over 2013.