Former Park Slope Hospital Employee Stole More Than $550K: AG

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn man was arraigned Tuesday after investigators found that he had stolen more than $550,000 from two hospitals during his time working in their payroll departments, the attorney general announced.

Wendell Lewis, 32, is facing federal charges for grand larceny, money laundering, identity theft and falsifying business records for his scheme to take hospital funds and use them on for his own "lavish lifestyle," prosecutors said. Lewis stole from both New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and Interfaith Medical Center, where he worked between 2015 and 2018.

“Stealing from our hospitals is unconscionable, but allegedly stealing from those hospitals that support our most underserved communities is especially egregious,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “My office will continue to root out this fraudulent behavior, and use our powers to protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

Lewis could face up to 15 years in prison on the charges if he is convicted, James added in a release. He has previously been convicted on grand larceny charges for a similar scheme when he worked in the payroll department at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, the release said.

When he was an employee at BMH and Interfaith — first at BMH from 2015 to 2016 and then at Interfaith until the theft was discovered — Lewis was able to redirect the direct deposits of the hospitals salaried employees.

He would add former employees of the hospitals back on the payroll and direct their salaries to bank accounts he set up using the someone else's identity. The scheme also included reversing the fraudulent payments to cover up the withdrawals and hide them from tax forms.

Lewis also used other employee's usernames to log into the computer system to hide his activities, prosecutors said.

Throughout the scheme, he used 14 fraudulent bank accounts in other people's names and stole over $550,000 from the hospitals. He used debit cards associated with these accounts to withdrawal over $546,000 in cash from ATM machines throughout the city and deposit over $175,000 in cash into his personal bank accounts.

The money he stole was used to lead a "lavish lifestyle," prosecutes said, including "taking multiple trips to the Caribbean, going on shopping sprees at high end stores, and dining at some of New York City’s prime restaurants."

He was arraigned Tuesday with a bail set at $100,000 bond over $50,000 cash and will appear in court again May 1.