Plot? What plot?
The defendants in an astoundingly brazen larceny — in which $5.7 million was electronically emptied out of the coffers of Columbia University in the Fall of 2010 — argued in opening statements today that the money simply turned up in their accounts.
“I don’t understand why I’m here,” one of the accused looters, Jeremy Dieudonne, told jurors, acting as his own lawyer and insisting he is just the innocent manager of a brokerage account. “Money came to my account, to do trade, business, and that’s it.”
Prosecutors in the four-defendant, Manhattan Supreme Court grand larceny trial are in turn insisting that the looting was intentional.
“Any claim that the pot of gold just fell into anyone’s lap is just a fiction, a story, a fantasy,” assistant district attorney Mark Frazier Scholl told jurors this morning.
The schemers are accused of funneling the money into the TD Bank account of alleged mastermind George Castro, 49, thanks to the help of two workers in the university’s accounts payable department.
The insiders allegedly altered a routing code and other information connected to payments slated to go from the university’s medical center to an affiliate hospital, New York Presbyterian. The money never reached its destination, the prosecutor said.
“Within six weeks, over $5 million meant for New York Presbyterian found it’s way into that TD Bank account,” Scholl said.
Castro was carrying bags of money — $200,000 in cash — into his new $80,000 Audi when cops busted him outside his Bronx residence in January, and he and co-defendants, Walter Stephens and Jeremy Dieudonne, had at that point thrown hundreds of thousands dollars into failed day trading investments, Scholl told jurors.
But the alleged accounts payable insiders — never saw more than $5,000 each for their troubles.
One, Moise Jeanpaul, has pled guilty to grand larceny and is hoping to avoid jail entirely by testifying against the four defendants, including former co-worker Joseph Pineras, who each face up to 25 years prison.