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Alfredo Mateo, 38, of Yonkers, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to grand larceny and identity theft charges, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced on Wednesday, May 21.
According to Bragg, Mateo launched a calculated financial scheme against the couple after the husband died on September 1, 2022, and the wife, a retired schoolteacher, was living in a nursing home under court-ordered guardianship due to incapacitation.
The next day, Mateo began cashing checks stolen from the couple, ultimately depositing 26 forged checks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars into his own bank account. Many of the checks bore false memos to avoid suspicion.
Mateo’s theft didn’t end there. Prosecutors say he also attempted to access the victim’s retirement funds by submitting five falsified forms to the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, including two after the teacher's death in July 2023. He also stole mailed pension checks and even impersonated the elderly woman in phone calls to TRS, at one point altering his voice to sound like an older woman.
"Using more than two dozen stolen checks, Alfredo Mateo depleted the bank accounts these New Yorkers built over the course of decades of hard work," Bragg said, adding, "While both victims have sadly passed away, we were determined to hold Mateo accountable for this disturbing fraud."
Mateo pleaded guilty to second and fourth-degree grand larceny as well as first-degree identity theft.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday, September 24.
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