A Florida couple has been charged with swindling $2.4 million from a Catholic housing charity in Brooklyn – and now the church is fighting to get its money back.
Lawyers for Theresa and Caesar Mejillones are due in court in Brooklyn today for a hearing in the grand larceny and forgery case. Prosecutors charge they drained housing funds destined for the rehab of a Park Slope apartment house for seniors and used it to buy property for themselves in Florida.
Both husband and wife had worked for Catholic Charities of the Brooklyn Diocese, but Theresa was an especially long-serving employee who in 1998, after 14 years on the job, became director of fiscal services for a nonprofit housing group called Progress of Peoples Management Corp.
Not long after she was given control of the books, Theresa and her husband, who no longer worked at the charity, set up a fake company called CJM Design and began to write checks to the firm from one of the charity’s bank accounts, according to court papers filed in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The Mejilloneses, who owned houses in Staten Island and New Jersey at the time, would then cash the checks and pocket the money – federal funds which had been destined for the rehab of the Bishop Boardman Apartments, a 200-unit building on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope.
Law-enforcement sources said the couple spent at least some of the money on property in Florida, where they are now living.
Records in New York show that after the alleged scam began, the couple also treated themselves to a $48,000 Hummer H2 and four Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
The couple – she is 50, and he is 49 – allegedly got away with the scam for four years, until she left the charity in early 2003.
In May 2003, another employee discovered the irregularities in the account, and the charity alerted the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who indicted the couple last August.
Reached by phone, Theresa refused to speak with The Post. Her lawyer did not return calls.
Last week, the charity filed suit in Manhattan federal court, seeking to recover the $2.4 million.
Catholic Charities spokeswoman Margaret Keaveney said the organization’s programs were not affected, and the work on the Bishop Boardman Apartments will soon be completed despite the alleged theft.
She stressed that the allegedly embezzled funds came from the federal government and were not from Sunday collection plates – but she said the crime stings all the same.
“[We are] sad, heartbroken and shocked,” Keaveney said. “And mostly just sad at the broken trust, the betrayal of the mission, of the trust that we have with the people we serve. That heightened the sadness.”