New York personal assistant guilty in $10 million elder fraud

A New York woman working as a personal assistant pleaded guilty On Wednesday, he was set to wire fraud for a scheme in which he stole $10 million from his elderly employers; one of them was a retired Salomon Brothers investment banker who died two years before the fraud was stopped.

The woman named Catalina Corona spent some of the stolen money on Gucci’s luxury products. Cartier, Louis VuittonProsecutors said it was to pay off a credit card debt.

Corona, 62, faces a maximum possible prison sentence of 30 years in the case. Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office in question.

Corona was accused of using fake checks and impersonating her employers to defraud Richard Schmeelk and his wife, Priscilla, of millions of dollars from 2017 to 2024, when she began working for them.

Richard Schmeelk He died in May 2022 at the age of 97 — but Corona continued to plunder his widow’s accounts, according to court records.

The Schmeelks were identified as Corona victims by the prosecutor at their plea hearing on Wednesday.

Richard Schmeelk, a World War II veteran, worked at Salomon Brothers for 40 years and served on the bank’s executive committee. After retiring from the investment bank, he co-founded the commercial banking firm CAI Managers.

“In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI bestowed on Dick the Order of St. Gregory the Great and his Knighthood for his work on behalf of the Catholic Church,” the obituary stated.

Richard Schmeelk, a member of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, was previously the victim of a similar scam by his then-personal executive secretary, according to court records.

In this case, the executive secretary “signed numerous checks to pay for himself and his family’s expenses… [the secretary’s] “my own use” New York federal appeals court noted in 1999.

Secretary Bebe Fazia Laljie was convicted in 1998 of multiple counts of mail and bank fraud following a jury trial in Manhattan federal court, presided over by current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which sentenced her to 46 months in prison and $505,532 in restitution.

In the latest case, Corona wrote hundreds of checks in cash from Schmeelk’s bank accounts to be made payable to him, according to court filings, and also transferred funds directly from the victims’ accounts to his own, according to court records.

Prosecutors said the fraud first came to light in April 2024, when a bank representative reached out to Priscilla Schmeelk about a suspicious check for $1,500.

criminal complaint It said Corona spent more than $1 million in stolen funds at Louis Vuitton, hundreds of thousands of dollars at Cartier and Gucci, and more than $305,000 on Apple products.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. “Today’s guilty plea means the defendant is held accountable for a calculated scheme that stole nearly $10 million from employers who trusted him,” he said in a statement.

“Our office will continue to pursue those who exploit their positions of trust for personal gain and ensure they face the consequences of their deception and fraud,” Nocella said.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, in question In 2024, nearly $5 billion in losses due to elder fraud occurred in more than 147,000 complaints.

The agency says the actual number of victims and casualties is likely higher because many victims do not report the crime or do not know they have been defrauded.