Lorraine Lopez, a former Yonkers City Councilwoman and aide to former Mayor Phil Amicone, was charged today with swindling thousands of dollars from a city-run Thanksgiving charity she helped run.
Prosecutors unsealed a three-count indictment today against Lopez, charging her with third-degree felony grand larceny, first-degree felony tampering with public records and misdemeanor official misconduct.
Lopez, 45, could not account for nearly $7,000 in money donated to buy more than 100 turkeys and other items for the 2011 Thanksgiving Turkey Drive. Lopez, who retired last year as Amicone’s special assistant, also said in a statement to officials in January that she kept about $1,500 of the money for herself.
“The allegations in this indictment are stark,” Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said in a statement today. “This defendant pocketed thousands of dollars in donations made expressly for a charity holiday food drive, putting herself and her wants and desires before those of hundreds of needy families in the city of Yonkers.”
Lopez declined to comment Thursday through her lawyer, Todd Lamond. She appeared gaunt in court and had previously told officials that she suffered from AIDS and had been hospitalized around the time of the turkey drive.
At the time of her alleged larceny, Lopez had just retired from her $129,708-a-year job as a special assistant for minority affairs to Amicone.
But the former mayor said Thursday he had no knowledge of her alleged misconduct and defended his former employee.
“All I can say is she did a wonderful job for all the years that she worked for me,” Amicone said. “She maintained her innocence when this initially came up in the press. I hope it turns out that she is innocent, because she did a lot of good work.”
Prosecutors said that between Nov. 7, 2011, and Jan. 17, Lopez received about $6,900 in donations for the Thanksgiving dinners and cashed the checks through the Yonkers Parking Authority.
Lopez’s alleged theft came to light when Yonkers Contracting Corporation Inc., the major contributor to the 2011 drive, contacted City Hall after Jan. 1 to ask about the success of the program, prosecutors said.
When no record of any purchases or disbursements could be found, the Yonkers Inspector General’s office launched an investigation, eventually interviewing Lopez Jan. 24, when she admitted to keeping some of the money.
Lopez “stated that she was afraid to go to jail and that she was willing to repay the money,” Lopez told investigators then. “When asked to describe where she purchased the additional items for the turkey drive she replied, ‘I don’t want to lie. I just don’t remember.’”
Lopez also said she took $1,500 for herself and an additional $600 for volunteers, while claiming to have fed around 250 families with the remaining money — though she did not have receipts for the expenditures or remember where she spent the money, according to the Inspector General interview.
Lopez also claimed to have spent extra money on food for the families, “because she wanted to go out with a bang,” investigators said. “Defendant also acknowledged shredding all the paperwork associated with the 2011 Turkey Drive because she did not want Anthony Piacente to have it.”
Piacente and Lopez had been accused by the city’s inspector general in 2009 of mismanaging a charity, the Yonkers Alliance for Latino and Immigrant Services, or YALIS, as well as deliberately filing inaccurate and misleading documents.
The inspector general referred that case to the Yonkers ethics board, which concluded in 2010 that there was a separate conflict arising from the YALIS board being comprised solely of city officials, but it did not recommend any sanctions.
Though Lopez told investigators in Thursday’s case that she still had her “work BlackBerry and number,” she also said that she was in poor financial straits and that her house was in foreclosure.
Lopez turned herself into city police this morning and was released on $2,500 bail. She is due back in court May 8.
If convicted, she could face a maximum of seven years in state prison.
Thursday’s indictment comes two months after the sentencing of two Yonkers men who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the fatal beating of Lopez’s brother, Robert Lopez, outside a Yonkers bar last year. The ex-girlfriend of one of the men also pleaded guilty in February to witness tampering and hindering prosecution in that case.
The charges against Lopez mean that all three officials who held the 2nd District seat on the Yonkers City Council between 1999 and 2009 have now faced criminal charges.
Lopez, a Democrat, was elected to the seat in November 1999 and resigned in May of 2001 to take a $135,000-a-year post as a Hispanic community liaison and advisor for then-Mayor John Spencer, a Republican.
Wilson Soto was appointed to complete Lopez’ term. Soto lost a bid for the seat that year to Sandy Annabi, who served eight years on the council as the 2nd District representative. Annabi was convicted last month of federal corruption charges that she sold her vote on the council by taking bribes to approve two large Yonkers development projects — a housing development at the former Longfellow School and the $842 million Ridge Hill development. Annabi was convicted along with former city Republican Chairman Zehy Jereis.
Then in March 2011, Soto pleaded guilty to filing a false affidavit, a misdemeanor, for falsifying a ballot during the Sept., 2009 primary.
“It is this kind of conduct that erodes the public’s trust and confidence in our government,” DiFiore said Thursday.
