You’d think a guy who crippled his own nonprofit mental health institute by embezzling $2.5 million couldn’t stoop any lower – but then he fleeced nearly $50,000 from his own daughter, a new lawsuit charges.
Jeffrey Bernstein, 63, was slapped with an up to 10-year jail sentence last fall for stealing from the Albert Ellis Institute, an Upper East Side psychotherapy organization.
And now his 30-year-old daughter, Nassau County resident Erica Bernstein, is suing him for racking up $24,000 on her American Express card and convincing her to cash in $25,000 in stocks.
From 2007 to 2012, when the crooked exec was tossed in the clink, his daughter allowed him to use her credit card and loaned him money from her stock portfolio “in exchange for his promise to repay” her, the Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.
But Jeffrey never returned the money, according to the suit. In court papers Erica claims the T. Rowe Price stock would now be worth over $30,000 if it had stayed untouched.
The disgruntled daughter believes her deadbeat dad is good for the money because he’s set to inherit a big chunk of a friend’s $1 million estate.
A Queens man named Ronald Goldfinger left his East 69th Street apartment, a Patek Phillippe watch, and a third of his personal property to his friend Bernstein, according to a copy of the will filed in the Manhattan suit.
Erica wants the court to force her dad to repay her $54,000 through the bequests.