A former Elmhurst woman admitted to illegally pocketing more than $170,000 while working as a bookkeeper for a Queens Boulevard business over a three-year-period, District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Patricia Talavera, 40, pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny for stealing a total of $177,000 in rent payments made by her company’s real estate tenants and is expected to serve between three and seven years in prison, the DA said. Between 2009 and 2012, Brown said the woman – now a resident of Yorktown in Westchester County – redirected business checks intended for Queens Crossroads LLC at 91-31 Queens Blvd. into a personal CitiBank account.
“The defendant has admitted her guilt, waived her appeal and acknowledged that she used her position as a trusted insider to divert $177,000 in company funds to her personal bank account,” Brown said. “The defendant has now been held accountable for her deceit and greed and the term of imprisonment to be imposed is more than warranted.”
The DA said Talavera worked for Queens Crossroads as a bookkeeper, collecting rent payments from the company’s real estate tenants, logging the payments into the company’s records and then depositing the payments into the company’s bank account at Sterling National Bank. A police investigation into the alleged scheme found copies of rent checks in the form of Western Union money orders made out to Queens Crossroads that were never deposited into the company account, but were instead diverted into the woman’s own personal account.
Brown said Talavera had altered, changed or removed names entirely from various checks so they could instead be sent to her personal bank account.
Talavera pleaded guilty to second-degree grand larceny before Queens Supreme Court Justice Charles S. LoPresto last Thursday and is expected to make a lump sum payment of $5,000 and sign a confession of judgment for $172,000, the DA said.
By Phil Corso
