June 21, 2012

Queens Woman Charged With Stealing Money from Group Home for the Developmentally Disabled

Yearwood stole more than $12K, worked as resident manager of two Nassau group homes

MINEOLA, NY – Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced today that a Queens woman has been arrested and charged with grand larceny and falsifying business records after she stole more than $12,000 from two local group homes for the developmentally disabled where she worked as the resident manager.

Denessa Yearwood, 36, of Springfield Gardens, was arrested yesterday by DA Investigators and charged with Grand Larceny in the Third Degree and ten counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted and is due back in court tomorrow.

Rice said that since 2001, Yearwood, who works as the resident manager for group homes in Lynbrook and East Rockaway, stole more than $12,000 by altering or re-using existing receipts for resident expenses in the homes’ ledgers. The theft was discovered during a routine audit of the Lynbrook homes’ books in May 2011 by a compliance analyst with Adults and Children with Learning and Developmental Disabilities, Inc., a non-profit that provides services to more 3,000 developmentally disabled children and adults in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Yearwood was terminated in June 2011.

“The caregivers in these homes are supposed to be responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the residents, not taking advantage of them,” Rice said. “The residents of both homes have been shortchanged for more than a decade, and it is outrageous that this defendant would abuse her position this way.”

Assistant District Attorney Vickie Curran of the Government & Consumer Frauds Bureau is prosecuting the case for the District Attorney’s Office. Yearwood is represented by the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County.

The charges are merely accusations and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.