NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Yonkers man who worked as a doorman at a building on the Upper West Side was indicted for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a retired New York City schoolteacher and her deceased husband beginning in 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
Alfred Mateo, 38, is charged with two counts of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, criminal possession of a forged instrument, falsifying business records, scheme to defraud and identity theft for the long-standing scheme.
“As alleged, Alfredo Mateo abused his access as a doorman to deplete the financial accounts of a retired teacher who was living in a nursing home, and her husband, who had recently passed away,” D.A. Alvin Bragg said. “Those who take advantage of the access entrusted in them to target older community members and steal from hardworking New Yorkers will be held accountable.”
According to court documents and statements, over the course of the fraud, Mateo stole about $477,685 from the retired schoolteacher and her husband.
The schoolteacher resided in a nursing home under a court-ordered guardianship as an incapacitated person, and her husband lived at their Riverside Drive apartment until he died of natural causes on Sept. 1, 2022, prosecutors said.
On Sept. 2, 2022, Mateo allegedly abused the death and deposited the first of 26 checks he stole from the schoolteacher. He wrote most of the checks to himself from the teacher’s bank account with false explanations on the memo line, and deposited them into his personal account, prosecutors said.
He also wrote a check from the husband’s account for $3,000.
Mateo is accused of then attempting to steal from the schoolteacher’s annuity and pension, earned from years of service at NYC Schools. He stole a form mailed to the apartment from the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City and the included personal information in order to submit five falsified forms to the system between May 5, 2023 and Oct. 12, 2023.
Three of these forms—two of which were submitted after the schoolteacher died in July 2023—caused disbursements from her annuity and attempted to change the direct deposit on her membership to Mateo’s bank account. He also stole several checks mailed to her after her death.
Mateo called the system and pretended to be the teacher, who was 91, on two occasions to change the phone number on her account. The first attempt failed, and on the second attempt, he changed his voice to sound like an older woman.
“Public service retirees are among the most vulnerable population in our City. In my capacity as the Inspector General for TRS, we will continue to aggressively investigate and, as here with the help of our partners, prosecute those who would take advantage of and defraud elderly retirees and their families,” Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman said. “There can be no tolerance for this type of fraud in any of our retirement systems.”