NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A housekeeper for an elderly Queens couple was indicted Thursday for allegedly embezzling thousands of dollars from her employers’ bank accounts.
According to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Ondina Flores, 52, of Richmond Hill, was indicted on a number of charges including grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and criminal possession of a forged instrument.
Katz alleges Flores embezzled over $72,000 from her employers’ bank accounts over a period of four years.
“The defendant was a long-time employee, entrusted to not only clean the home of her employer but to also help pay the bills following the death of the elderly woman’s husband,” Katz said in a statement. “She betrayed that trust and allegedly began embezzling money instead of paying the bills. In custody, the defendant now faces very serious charges.”
According to a press release, Flores worked for the elderly couple for 15 years as a housekeeper. After the death of the husband, the couple’s son asked her to continue cleaning his “deteriorating” mother’s home and had Flores assist with paying some bills.
The son would sign checks against his parent’s bank accounts and would give them to Flores to fill in the payee and the amount of the bills, Katz said. When the mother died, the son then hired Flores to be a housekeeper at his own home in Queens.
“One day, the son and his wife observed the defendant on video surveillance allegedly rummaging through their personal papers in an unauthorized location inside their home. They also caught her allegedly disconnecting the wires to cut the video feed,” the DA said in a release. “This prompted the son to review bank statements of his mother’s bank accounts, which revealed that the defendant had allegedly been stealing from the mother’s bank accounts by writing numerous checks payable to cash.”
An investigation by the Queens DA’s office and the NYPD found that between January 2015 and June 2019, Flores allegedly diverted 103 checks in various amounts by making them payable to cash, endorsing the back of the checks and then depositing them to her own bank accounts.
Flores was ordered to return to court on Sept. 29. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison.