Photo Courtesy of Google
Poole and Moore worked at the Central Queens Y in 2018.
By Forum Staff
A Jamaica man and Far Rockaway woman have been charged with stealing thousands of dollars intended for youth summer employees, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz recently announced.
Rahmello Poole, 27, and Mariah Moore, 23, who worked at the Central Queens Y in 2018, allegedly filed bogus timesheets for non-active employees and then used the earnings deposited on debit cards for their own personal gain, Katz said.
Poole and Moore have been arraigned on a 34-count indictment charging them with grand larceny in the third and fourth degree, falsifying business records in the first degree, offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree, defrauding the government and tampering with public records in the second degree. They have been ordered to return to court on Dec. 16.
According to the charges, in the summer of 2018, Poole worked as a worksite coordinator and Moore was his clerk. Poole’s duties included providing oversight for the teenagers’ work areas and processing their timesheets. In this role, Poole had access to the debit cards that were used to pay the workers and the PIN numbers. Moore, in her role as an administrative clerk, was responsible for organizing and entering the timesheets into the system’s payroll database. Debit cards were used to pay some workers in lieu of direct deposit into bank accounts.
An investigator with the City Department of Investigation audited the records and found 13 youth workers who were registered with the program but were not actually employed in the summer of 2018. Yet, there were timesheets created for those participants and debit cards used to pay for the hours those young people supposedly worked. Moore allegedly inputted the false work hours and Poole is accused of approving those timesheets.
According to the complaint, Poole loaded debit cards with $10,144 and allegedly withdrew $9,330 from
ATMs for his own personal use and made a $56 point of sale transaction. Moore is accused of fraudulently uploading $8,043 and made ATM withdrawals totaling $7,582 and spent another $360 in point of sale transactions at various merchants.
“The funds allocated to the City’s Summer Youth Employment Program are intended to provide job opportunities to Queens teenagers as well as funding for literacy services, after school programs and more,” Katz said. “As alleged, these defendants found a way to manipulate the system to enrich themselves by withdrawing funds from the debit cards and making point of sale transactions. I want to thank the investigators with DOI for their hard work looking into this matter. And let this be a warning to those who seek to cash in with crooked schemes, my office will continue to team up with our law enforcement partners to root out fraud and other illegal cons.”
DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett added, “I thank all the parties that stepped up to report this matter and help DOI stop the corruption.”
If convicted, Poole and Moore face up to 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison.
