Swindled out of $1.5 mil: Queens DA

A band of soulless scammers turned a homeless amputee’s legal windfall into their own $1.5 million jackpot, Queens prosecutors said Thursday.

A bodega owner, his dad, a bank manager and two other men allegedly grabbed the money from Michelle Carter, 62, who won a $4 million settlement after she lost both legs when she was struck by a subway train. Carter — who last year became an internet sensation when she was recorded smoking what looked like a blunt on a Brooklyn M train — entrusted a $799,000 check in October 2015 to Ammar Awawdeh, 27, who co-owned a deli on Roosevelt Island with his father, Yaser Awawdeh, 58.

Carter (inset), who had no bank account, thought Awawdeh would use the money to run a tab at his deli, so she could buy cartons of cigarettes to resell.

Instead, Awawdeh used her cash to pay for his wedding, honeymoon, Las Vegas bachelor party and other gambling trips, prosecutors said.

Awadeh’s dad allegedly used some money for a car down payment and wrote checks to several businesses.

Carter stashed a second check for $886,000 in a Bible she carried in her wheelchair.

Somehow Awawdeh got his hands on the Good Book and the check — and, aided by Anas Ali, 32, a Chase bank manager from Staten Island, deposited it into the account of a in Queens owned by 30-year-old Brooklyn resident Salah Omairat, investigators found.

In January 2016, Carter realized the $886,000 check in her Bible — the last piece of her fortune — was missing.

She reported the theft to the first cop she saw — an Amtrak Police officer at Penn Station.

Carter was the unwitting star of a viral video in January 2017 that showed her puffing on what looked like a marijuana blunt on the subway, to the jeers of other straphangers.

Her lawyer, Robert Unger, told The News he was disgusted by the video, as Carter is mentally disabled and can’t take care of herself.