Neighbor honored for helping smitten friend

Tony Stabile never intended to win an award for helping out a senior who had been gypped by a “sweetheart swindler,” but if the recognition heartens neighbors to pay more attention to their elderly relatives then it’s for the better, Stabile said, as he was honored by the South Queens Democratic Club last week.
“Don’t leave these people here to rot and fend for themselves,” Stabile said. “They were good for a lot of years, and now that they have a few aches and pains, and they need a little bit of extra care, their relatives just forget about them.”
Stabile said that when he visits his aunt and uncle, Tony and Faye Sarno, in a nursing home in Amityville, he often sees other older people who rarely get visitors.
“Some of the patients, you can find them sitting in the same place at the same time everyday. A lot of them sit by the elevators hoping that someone is going to walk out of the elevator that they know. It breaks my heart when I see that,” Stabile said, explaining how talking to elderly people like Stabile’s own 85-year-old Howard Beach neighbor Louis Bruno can make all the difference.
For nearly three decades, Stabile, who works as a horse trainer, jockey agent, and bloodstock agent, would greet Bruno over the fence that separates their bordering backyards. Bruno, who kept mostly to himself, would wave back and go about his business, Stabile said.
Then one day Bruno knocked on Stabile’s front door, near tears with a stack of bankbooks in hand. Flipping through the books, Stabile saw that nearly $400,000 had been withdrawn from Bruno’s once-bulging accounts, and the love-struck senior believed that a pretty, young woman he had been seeing on and off for a year had stolen away with the loot.
Bruno said, “What am I going to do?” So, I said, “Louie, we’ve got to try and find this person and recover the money,” Stabile remembered.
After calling Adult Protective Services (APS), Stabile and Bruno went over to the 106th Precinct, and then called the Queens District Attorney’s Office, which began investigating the suspected sweetheart swindler, Natasha (Munchkin) Marks. In October 2006, Marks, 20, was arrested after allegedly trying to entice a 79-year-old gentleman to fork over $5,000 to pay for her fictitious cancer treatments.
Meanwhile, Bruno realized that he was in deeper water than he had first realized. Two days after visiting the police precinct, he received a letter at home, stating that his house had been mortgaged and money withdrawn - to a tune of nearly $560,000.
“I knew it was bad, and I figured that we had better act on it as quickly as possible,” Stabile said, explaining how he called someone from APS at home on a Sunday night to get some kind of reassurance that Bruno would not be forced out of his home.
In Bruno’s case, the warning signs were all there that something was amiss.
“All of a sudden he was withdrawing $20,000 and $30,000 at a clip; it just doesn’t make sense … There should be some kind of thing where they [bank officials] can question his next of kin,” Stabile said of Bruno’s transactions.
Although for Bruno help arrived in time, Stabile speculated that so many more seniors lose out because they are embarrassed about being gypped. The NYC Department of the Aging believes that they handle only a fraction of the estimated 50,000 “sweetheart swindles” conducted in the City each year.
“These people are vulnerable; they are lonely,” Stabile said. “They get smitten, and all of a sudden they are in too deep.”
Stabile credits his parents with instilling in him a deep respect for his elders - he promised his mother before she died last year that he would look out for those around him.
In addition, Stabile pointed to the guidance of two teachers at John Adams High School in Ozone Park for keeping him on the right path - Dr. David Blancher, who now teaches at Queensborough Community College in Bayside, and Frank Gulluscio, the District Manager of Community Board 6.
Nevertheless, Stabile’s proud family - Phyllis, his wife of 30 years and Anthony Jr., his 29-year-old son - said that Stabile deserves all the praise rendered garnered by the Democratic Club and Councilmember Joseph Addabbo.
“I’m sure my dad would have wished that he could have stopped her from getting any of his [Bruno’s] money,” Anthony, Jr. said.
Criminal charges brought against Marks have now been bumped up to a Hate Crime, and she is facing life in prison if convicted. Her next scheduled court date is Tuesday, February 27.