Guilty plea in $180G JNF theft

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A Westbury woman has pleaded guilty to stealing the identity of a Suffolk County resident in order to cash thousands of dollars in checks stolen from the Rockville Centre-based Jewish National Fund (JNF), District Attorney Kathleen Rice said on Wednesday.
The woman is expected to receive two consecutive sentences of nine months in jail, a civil judgment of $180,577.48 to the JNF, and $400 in reparations to the identity theft victim, Rice said.
In February, the woman opened several business bank accounts in the names of JNF vendors so she could cash checks stolen from the charity by using the stolen identity of a Suffolk County resident, Rice said.
The case came to the attention of police when the defendant attempted to make a withdrawal after depositing a check stolen from the JNF in the amount of $71,239.24.
The investigation did not find any relationship between the identity theft victim and the charity, Rice said.
The woman was arrested in April by the Nassau County Police Department Crimes Against Property Squad, with assistance from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Rockville Centre Police Department. Assistant DA Diane Peress, chief of DA Rice’s Economic Crimes Bureau, and ADA Whitney Matthews are prosecuting the case. The woman is represented by Linda Lebovitz of the Nassau County Legal Aid Society.