It’s not every day that the US Marshals Service breaks somebody out of prison.
But in the early 1990s, it made an exception for Lilly Schmidt, who really made a name — and 39 more — for herself.
With 40 different aliases, the Bulgarian native, along with Bronx-born partner Leonard Steingard, managed to scam banks, jewelers and art galleries out of some $1 million in loot — and even infiltrated the Pentagon, write Mike Earp and David Fisher in the new book “US Marshals: Inside America’s Most Storied Law Enforcement Agency.”
Her plan was to hire a hit man to kill the Defense investigators taking her from prison to court, and have the killer escort her to freedom.
It was up to Bob Leschorn — a marshal who posed as the Mafia hitman breaking her out — to make her admit to the scheme on tape after the “controlled breakout” from Rikers.
“It was dangerous because the prison guards didn’t know what we were doing — and we didn’t know if she had made additional plans,” Leschorn explains in the book. “We had to be alert to the possibility she was going to double-cross the hit man.”
Schmidt was convicted in 1993 on charges of attempted escape and solicitation to commit murder, and got an additional 30 years.
Now 61, she is jailed at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Texas. Her release date is still five years away.