Glen Head woman sentenced in $600K theft scheme

A Glen Head woman was sentenced Thursday, having already pleaded guilty to stealing more than $600,000 from the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club in Oyster Bay, officials said.

Anna Maria Restrepo, also known as Anna Maria Saboski, was sentenced to three to six years in prison, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s office. She was given a civil judgment order for $608,886 on behalf of the yacht club and a civil judgment order in the amount of $14,449 on behalf of American Express. She waived her right to appeal the plea and sentence.

“Entrusted with the club’s credit cards, this defendant exploited that unique access to siphon $600,000 of club funds into her own bank accounts and used the money for personal expenses and made withdrawals at several casinos and resorts,” Anne Donnelly, the Nassau DA, said in a statement.

“The defendant was previously convicted for a similar fraud scheme just months after she began working for the yacht club,” she added. “Instead of starting fresh the defendant’s greed only intensified, and now she will spend years in prison as a result of her actions.”

Officials say the defendant handled recordkeeping and the payment of the club’s credit card. Her duties regarding purchasing were limited to office supplies as all boatyard inventory was purchased directly by the yacht club’s ship-store clerk, officials said.

The theft took place between 2010 and 2017, officials said, much it committed using credit card numbers belonging to two other employees. The DA’s office said Restrepo initiated fraudulent credit card charges using PayPal and directed the funds to her own personal PayPal account.

From January 2013 through February 2017 the credit cards assigned to the two employees were involved in more than 460 unauthorized fund transfers to the defendant’s PayPal account, according to the DA’s office. Restrepo also made unauthorized charges at restaurants and retail stores.

She falsified the club’s business records and altered transactions to give the appearance that they were payments made to legitimate yacht-club vendors, officials said. These falsifications allowed the scheme to go on undetected for several years.

Between 2013 and 2017, funds that were fraudulently transferred into the defendant’s PayPal account were disbursed using a PayPal debit card more than 880 times, including withdrawals and transactions that took place in Costa Rica, The Seneca Casino Hotel in Niagara Falls, New York, and the Turning Stone Resort in Verona, New York, officials said. Withdrawals were also made in Glen Cove, Glen Head and Oyster Bay. There were additional transfers from the defendant’s PayPal account directly into a bank account that she controlled.

In July 2016, the defendant also opened an American Express card in the name of a yacht club employee without his permission or consent, and a supplemental account in her own name, according to the DA’s office.

From August 2016 through February 2017, the defendant used these cards to make unauthorized online purchases for tens of thousands of dollars to fund her PayPal account and to such retailers as PeaPod, Ticketmaster, and the Tropicana Casino & Resort, officials said.

The defendant was arrested by members of the Nassau County Police Department in 2017.

She has a previous conviction from 2009 for first-degree falsifying business records and that she had stolen more than $100,000 while working as a fiscal manager at Glen Cove Child Day Care. She had been sentenced to a conditional discharge.

r