FDNY officials canned Robert Singer, 39, a firefighter first grade at Ladder Co. 30 in Harlem, after an administrative law judge found that he passed "cheat notes" with his brother Brian in a bathroom stall during a May 2002 promotional test.
While Brian, 36, had already completed his test, Robert -- a seven-year FDNY veteran --was still taking the exam when the two met in a second-floor bathroom and were spotted by a hall monitor exchanging papers between stalls.
When higher-ranking authorities moved into the bathroom and asked Robert to come out, he dumped 15 small pieces of paper that "contained material pertinent to the exam" in the toilet, court documents assert.
The disgraced firefighter didn't dispute that he had dumped notes related to the exam in the toilet, but claimed that they were last-minute study aids he hadn't taken out of his pocket after the test got under way.
He attempted to dispose of the evidence for fear of being "wrongly" accused of cheating, according to his testimony.
Singer further intimated that the paper he was actually passing to his brother was the front piece of their deceased dad's fire helmet.
Their father, a lieutenant from Engine Co. 226 in Brooklyn Heights, shot himself in his son Brian's bedroom in 1980, trial documents show.
Robert testified "that he picked the day of the exam to perform this private ceremonial gesture because his father had been a lieutenant when he died," according to court records.
But Judge Raymond Kramer rejected the brothers' sad story.
"It was an elaborate, after-the-fact fabrication in a desperate attempt to explain away what the brothers otherwise knew was very serious misconduct," Kramer wrote in his decision.
Though Robert had an exemplary record up to that point, Kramer recommended his firing, and FDNY officials let him go last week.
Because Brian had already completed and passed the test before the incident, he was promoted to lieutenant in February 2003.
None of the other would-be lieutenants were involved in the cheating, according to FDNY officials.
Attorneys for Singer didn't return calls for comment. He is the first firefighter to be fired in 2005.
