A Queens woman pleaded guilty April 8 to stealing $9.5 million from an elderly Lawrence couple who trusted her as their personal assistant.
Catalina Corona, 62, of 51st Avenue near Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Corona, admitted in Brooklyn federal court to wire fraud after a seven-year scheme targeting investment banker Richard Schmeelk and his wife Priscilla. She faces up to 30 years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis will sentence her on July 23.
The scale of it takes a moment to land. Nearly ten million dollars. From two people who hired her to pay their bills.
Between 2017 and 2024, Corona worked as the couple’s personal assistant while they lived in Lawrence, Nassau County and maintained a second home in Palm Springs, Florida. Her job was to handle bill payments and book travel. Instead, she deposited hundreds of checks written to cash from their bank accounts, forging both signatures, without the Schmeelks ever knowing. She funneled the money to pay down her own credit card debt and to shop at stores most people walk past and admire from the sidewalk.
The FBI’s General Crimes Section didn’t catch this through brilliant detective work, at least not at first. A single suspicious check for $1,500, flagged by one of the banks Corona used in 2024, opened the door. By then, Richard Schmeelk had been dead for two years, having passed at 92. Corona hadn’t stopped. She kept forging checks and draining Priscilla Schmeelk’s accounts even after her husband was gone.
According to Long Island Press, investigators found that Corona spent more than $1 million in stolen funds at Louis Vuitton, approximately $125,000 at Cartier, nearly $300,000 at Gucci, and more than $300,000 on Apple merchandise. Close to $5 million went directly toward paying off her credit card bills. She deposited forged checks at multiple banks, including one in Woodside, Queens.
“Today’s plea means the defendant has been held accountable for a calculated scheme that siphoned off nearly $10 million from the very employers who trusted her,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella. “Our office will continue to pursue those who exploit positions of trust for personal gain and ensure they face the consequences for their deception and fraud.”
Richard Schmeelk was no ordinary mark, though that shouldn’t matter to the law. He was a former Salomon Brothers investment banker, a Far Rockaway native who graduated from Far Rockaway High School in 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving in the submarine service through World War II. The man survived a war underwater. He spent decades building a career in finance. His widow, at whatever age she now is, gets to spend her remaining years knowing that the person handling her household accounts was systematically looting it.
That’s the detail that sticks.
Financial elder abuse is a federal crime, and wire fraud carries serious federal penalties, but the practical reality is that most of these cases get missed entirely. Victims are often elderly, often trusting people who’ve delegated bill-paying to someone else precisely because they don’t want to deal with it anymore. By the time anyone notices, the money’s gone. In this case, $9.5 million was gone before a single $1,500 check raised a flag.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle, of the New York Field Office, didn’t mince words. “Catalina Corona stole nearly $10 million from an elderly couple who entrusted her with their care to fund her lavish shopping habits,” Barnacle said. “The FBI is committed to holding accountable individuals who abuse positions of trust out of selfish greed.”
The Lawrence connection matters to Nassau County residents in a specific way. Lawrence isn’t a community where people expect to become targets of multimillion-dollar fraud schemes run out of their own checkbooks. It’s a quiet Five Towns village where a lot of retirees settle in houses they’ve owned for decades. They hire people to help manage their lives. That’s not naivety; it’s practical. The lesson here isn’t that elderly people shouldn’t trust anyone. The lesson is that banks and financial institutions need better systems for catching this kind of steady, methodical theft before it hits nine figures.
Corona’s July 23 sentencing is set before Judge Garaufis in Brooklyn federal court. The maximum is 30 years. Restitution and fines are also on the table, though recovering $9.5 million spent on luxury goods and credit card debt is a long shot at best.