Attorney: Client recruited by ‘masterminds to be the sucker’
Florida woman pleads guilty to Stamford larceny
STAMFORD — A South American immigrant, who was caught helping others steal $40,000 from a Stamford woman duped into thinking she was sending the money to the FBI, has pleaded guilty to firstdegree larceny and will be sentenced to time served in May.
Maria Lares-Molina, 32, of Medley, Fla., will have to spend the next five years serving probation by paying back the $40,000, which her attorney insists she never received a penny of. Unable to post a $500,000 court-appearance bond, Molina has been in prison since June when she was extradited from Florida on the larceny charge.
“She was recruited by these masterminds to be the sucker, to go take the money out of her own account and give it to them. She did not get one penny, not every a dime. She got hustled,” said Allan Friedman, her Stamford criminal defense attorney.
According to police, in November 2018 a woman reported she had been swindled out of $79,600 by a woman posing as an FBI agent and another man posing as Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.
The Washington Boulevard woman said the “FBI” woman said her identification had been used to rent cars and open back accounts in different states; the cars under her name had been searched and found to contain drugs. She was told to wire $40,000 to Miami, or she would be arrested and sent to Texas where she would have to spend the next 30 years in jail, according to Lares-Molina’s six-page arrest affidavit prepared by financial crimes investigator Paul DeRiu.
After sending the $40,000, the Stamford woman was then told to make out four additional checks each for $9,900 and FexEx them to Kissimmee, Florida.
Police were able to help the woman recover the four checks, but the $40,000 was lost.
DeRiu was able to determine the account the $40,000 had been wired into was controlled by Lares-Molina, the affidavit stated. In viewing bank and surveillance photos and videos of the bank activity, DeRiu saw Lares-Molina make bank transactions and withdrawals of the money sent to Florida by the Stamford woman, the affidavit said.
But, Friedman said, the real people who stole the money, those who were posing as the FBI agent and Jepson are the real crooks and they took advantage of Lares-Molina’s financial desperation. He said Lares-Molina is a refugee from Venezuela and she never could have convinced anyone that she was an FBI agent.
“I feel my client was innocent. This is one of those situations where she felt she was pressured to take this deal in order to get out of jail because she could not make a $500,000 courtappearance bond. If she had taken this matter to trial and was found guilty, she would have been sitting in jail for a significantly greater period of time,” Friedman said. “But I feel bad in my heart because I feel like she is a victim too and the bad actors are taking advantage of people like her.”
Friedman said the lesson is to never accept money into one’s bank account, no matter who it is from because you can be charged with larceny just like Lares-Molina.
“The masterminds behind this scheme are covering their tracks by using unsuspecting people,” he said.