By Madina Toure
A College Point woman who formerly worked as a bookkeeper for a College Point truck parts company was sentenced to up to four years in prison for a $1.2 million grand larceny, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced last Thursday.
Laura Greco, 52, of 14th Road in College Point, was charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and falsifying business records, according to the criminal complaint.
Greco appeared before Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter and was sentenced to two to four years in prison on her August guilty plea to two counts of grand larceny, Brown said.
“The defendant was financially destroying her employer’s business while at the same time accepting a paycheck each week,” Brown said in a statement. “The defendant has admitted that she betrayed her position of trust, as such, the sentence meted out by the court is more than warranted.”
Greco was employed as a bookkeeper at New York Metro Truck, Inc., on 31-55 College Point Blvd. in College Point, the Queens DA said. Her responsibilities included entering customers’ checks as invoice payments into the company’s accounting systems, he continued.
During her stint , Greco was approached by customers who asked that she take some of the money they owed the company off their accounts in return for cash and other gifts, Brown said.
Greco indicated in the company’s accounting systems that various invoices had been paid by customers by check, the criminal complaint said. Records show that no checks were ever cashed in payment for the invoices and that invoices were never paid for by the customers, it said.
The total number of invoices that had not been paid came out to $792,851.78, according to the complaint.
New York Metro Truck suffered a loss of more than $1.2 million in unpaid customer bills between October 2007 and January 2013 as a result of Greco’s actions, Brown said.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtoure@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.
