An Amityville man was indicted last week on charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of a forged instrument after allegedly stealing a nearly $1.7 million U.S. Treasury check meant for a Brooklyn home care agency.
Marc Lindor, arraigned Thursday, April 16, pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted and is due back in court May 18, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly announced.
The scheme started in May 2024. A check originally issued to a Brooklyn-based home care agency for a COVID-19-related employee retention tax credit was fraudulently altered to list Lindor’s company, Nicolaoca Enterprises, Inc., as the payee. Surveillance video captured on May 21, 2024, shows Lindor allegedly handing that altered check to a bank teller in Valley Stream, Nassau County. The funds landed in a Nicolaoca Enterprises business account Lindor had opened just four months earlier, in January 2024. At the moment of deposit, the account carried a negative balance of $77.85.
What followed reads like a tutorial in how not to be subtle about stolen money. Between June 4 and July 3, 2024, Lindor allegedly pulled more than $470,000 out of the account, according to Donnelly. He transferred $220,000 to bank accounts belonging to other people. He withdrew roughly $241,000 in cash and checks at branches in Valley Stream and in Queens Village. Bank records showed he burned through more than $9,000 in just seven days, spending at BMW, Best Buy, the JW Marriott, and on airfare. Nobody saves receipts from a hotel stay they paid for with a fraudulently deposited federal check.
The bank, meanwhile, was doing routine compliance work. It ran a periodic review of Lindor’s business account, he couldn’t provide proper proof of address, and around July 10, 2024, the bank closed the account and issued a closeout check for the remaining balance: roughly $1.23 million.
That’s where the story gets almost theatrical. Around July 29, 2024, the U.S. Treasury notified the bank that the original check had been fraudulently altered and launched a formal reclamation request. The bank immediately put a stop payment on the closeout check. Lindor then allegedly tried to deposit that closeout check at a check-cashing business in Brooklyn. The company refused. The bank confirmed the check would bounce.
Undeterred, Lindor allegedly opened a new checking account, again named Nicolaoca Enterprises, Inc., at a different financial institution sometime between July 25 and August 6, 2024. This time he listed himself as the owner of a Brooklyn autobody shop before allegedly attempting to deposit the closeout check into that account, according to Long Island Press.
None of it worked. The full investigative picture, assembled from surveillance footage, bank records, and account histories across multiple institutions, gave prosecutors a detailed trail. Donnelly’s office has handled plenty of fraud cases. This one had a paper trail wide enough to land a small plane on.
The victim agency that never got its money was a Brooklyn home care business. These firms applied for COVID-19 employee retention credits to help cover payroll costs during the pandemic. The program was a lifeline for small operations keeping elderly and disabled clients in their homes. The check the agency was owed was legitimate. Somebody just changed the name on it.
The IRS’s Employee Retention Credit program distributed hundreds of billions of dollars to employers between 2020 and 2021, and the checks, in many cases large ones, moved through traditional mail and banking channels. Federal investigators and local prosecutors have been untangling ERC fraud cases for two years now. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has flagged altered-check fraud as a persistent exposure in the program’s distribution pipeline.
Nassau County has seen its share of financial crimes, but $1.7 million targeting a senior home care agency is a figure that stings. The people that agency serves don’t have much margin for error, and neither do the small companies that keep them cared for.
Lindor’s next court date is May 18.