Doctored Tenants’ Payments On Job
The former bookkeeper of an Elmhurst building management company is paying the price for stealing more than $170,000 in rent payments, prosecutors announced last Thursday, Jan. 23.
Patricia Talavera, 40, of Yorktown in Westchester County- who was previously employed by Queens Crossroads LLC at 91-31 Queens Blvd.-entered a guilty plea last Thursday to a count of seconddegree grand larceny before Queens Supreme Court Justice Charles S. LoPresto.
Sentencing is scheduled to take place on May 30, and it is expected Talavera will be ordered to serve between 3 1/2 and seven years in prison. She will also be required to make a lum sum of payment for $5,000 and sign a confession of judgment to her former employer for $172,000.
“[Talavera] has admitted her guilt, waived appeal and acknowledged that she used her position as a trusted insider to divert $177,000 in company funds to her personal bank account,” Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said in a statement last Thursday. “The defendant has now been held accountable for her deceit and greed, and the term of imprisonment to be imposed is more than warranted.”
Reportedly, Queens Crossroads launched an internal investigation after determining funds were missing from its account. In the process, law enforcement sources said, the company found copies of money orders representing tenants’ rent payments between 2009 and 2012 that were never deposited.
Upon further investigation, authorities determined that the money orders-which had the purchaser’s identifying information either altered or removed-were instead deposited into Talavera’s personal bank account.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Gloria T.D. Pellegrino of the DA’s Economic Crimes Bureau, which is supervised by Assistant District Attorneys Gregory C. Pavlides, bureau chief, and Christina Hanophy, deputy bureau chief.
