A New York woman who worked as a personal assistant pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $10 million from her elderly employers – a Salomon Brothers banker and his wife – to fund a lavish lifestyle including goods from Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
From about 2017 through 2024, Catalina Corona, 62, repeatedly deposited hundreds of checks written to cash – made payable to herself – from the late Richard Schmeelk and his widow Priscilla’s accounts to pay her credit card bills and snag high-end goods from Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Gucci, according to court filings.
Corona – who lives in Queens and showed up at federal court last year in a black cardigan with a $1,500 Louis Vuitton clutch – pleaded guilty to wire fraud at Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.
She faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, as well as restitution and fines, according to the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
“Catalina Corona stole nearly $10 million from an elderly couple who entrusted her with their care to fund her lavish shopping habits,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle said in a statement.
“The FBI is committed to holding accountable individuals who abuse positions of trust out of selfish greed.”
Richard Schmeelk, who worked for 40 years at Salomon Brothers, died at 97 in May 2022, two years before the fraudulent check scheme was exposed.
But that didn’t stop Corona, who kept looting from his widow’s accounts until she was caught in 2024 when a bank employee contacted Priscilla Schmeelk about a suspicious $1,500 check, according to court records.
After he retired from the storied investment bank, Richard Schmeelk co-founded his own firm, CAI Managers. He was a World War II veteran who was knighted by Pope Benedict XVI, according to his obituary, and a member of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Fla., club.
Schmeelk was similarly ripped off by his then-executive secretary, Bebe Fazia Laljie, decades earlier, when she diverted checks that he had signed for his personal expenses for her own use over nearly three years, a New York federal appeals court ruled in 1999.
Laljie was convicted of mail and bank fraud in 1998 at a Manhattan federal court following a jury trial presided over by now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She was sentenced to 46 months in prison and restitution payments of $505,532.
According to federal prosecutors, Corona started working for the elderly couple in January 2017 and soon started stealing from them by forging checks that were made out to “cash.”
On multiple occasions, Corona even started calling the bank claiming to be one of the victims to get information on the couple’s bank accounts, according to prosecutors.
During her yearslong scheme, she allegedly spent more than $1 million in stolen funds at Louis Vuitton; hundreds of thousands of dollars at both Cartier and Gucci; and $305,000 on Apple products, mostly at stores in Queens and Long Island.
She also used the money to pay off her credit card bills and book plane tickets, filings stated.
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