A Staten Island woman pleaded guilty Friday to stealing $406,000 from a charity for slain New York police officers, according to the New York Daily News.
“I wrote these checks, I think two of them or whatever, and it was considered fraud,” Lorraine Shanley, 69, said.
{mosads}“I’ve had family issues. Hardship,” she added. “It wasn’t for a new car, a new home. It was for my special needs grandchild.”
Shanley committed the crime while serving as a volunteer for Survivors of the Shield. She faces more than two years behind bars and will repay the money she stole and pay the Internal Revenue Service $103,983.
“You knew it was wrong. You knew it was illegal. You felt it was justified because of your special needs grandchild?” Judge Sidney Stein asked in Manhattan Federal Court.
“Yes,” Shanley responded.
Prosecutors said the scam lasted from 2010 and 2017 and was used to cover more than her grandchild’s needs, including her son’s legal bills, landscaping for her home and Barbra Streisand tickets.
Shanley’s husband, a former police officer, died on the job in 1986 of a heart attack.
“There was a major part of these checks to help my children. As a widow I thought I could do it. They said no,” Shanley said.