A Bedford-Stuyvesant woman stole $33,000 meant for a child whose grandmother had died, authorities said.
Katrina Perry, 56, took benefits meant to support her own niece who had been adopted by Perry’s mother and the child’s grandmother, investigators said.
The grandmother received checks to support her granddaughter, who is also Perry’s niece, but she died in August 2006, officials said.
“This defendant exploited her family’s situation,” said DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.
The child was thrust into the foster care system but the city continued sending adoption support checks to the grandmother, authorities said.
Perry failed to notify the Administration for Children’s Services that her mother died and the child had been sent to another home, officials said.
Instead, she used her mom’s senior citizen’s MTA reduced fare card to open a checking account in her mother’s name and used it to pocket the payments for several years, authorities said.
“(Perry) illegally siphoned tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds, according to the criminal complaint,” Gill Hearn said. “But the City exposed this troubling conduct and stopped the ongoing charged theft.”
An internal review found that the city was writing checks to the child’s new foster parents as well as the deceased grandmother who had adopted her, authorities said.
Perry was charged yesterday with two counts of grand larceny, 30 counts of identity theft and 14 counts each of petit larceny and criminal impersonation.
kconley@nypost.com