Two Manhattan-based personal bankers have been indicted for looting a total of $1 million from customers — including a dapper accused grifter charged with swiping $300,000 from an old woman suffering from dementia.
Loafer and cable-knit-loving Edward Lewando allegedly tricked feeble Helen Korne, 94, into signing check after check during his visits to her home, using the money to pay off his American Express bill and buy himself goodies from Bergdorf Goodman and Louis Vuitton, prosecutor Elizaeth Loewy said in Manhattan Supreme Court today.
Even as he stole from the old woman, who passed away in May, “He told family members that he regarded her as his own grandmother,” said Loewy, who heads DA Cyrus Vance’s Elder-Abuse Unit.
Lewando, 51, of Holbrook, NY, pleaded not guilty, and was ordered held on $300,000 bail. “It’s not true,” he told reporters of his grand larceny charges when he was first hauled into court yesterday.
“The allegations here are meritless,” Lewando’s lawyer, Paul Feinman, contended in asking Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward for lower bail.
“The funds were used for a disabled woman who needed substantial care,” including for nursing care, the lawyer said.
In the second indictment, a personal banker for J.P.Morgan Chase at 59 West 86th Street, Fordin Francois, 26, is charged with grand larceny, identity theft, computer trespass and unlawful possession of personal identification information.
Francois, of Queens, looted $700,000 from 17 account holders by stealing their personal identification information and passing it along to unnamed collaborators who made the withdrawals, according to prosecutors with the DA’s Cybercrime & Identity Theft Bureau,
He was busted last month holding a briefcase crammed with the personal identification info of “numerous” Chase bank customers, prosecutors say.
Francois told cops that he took the money because “I had been threatened by three gentlemen,” who he knew through his sister, according to police statements released as he pleaded not guilty today.