Metro

‘Law & Order’ star Tamara Tunie blasts real-life crook who stole her $1 million

Sexy “Law & Order: SVU” star Tamara Tunie walloped a real-life crook today — blasting the “malicious, cruel, diabolical” ex-business manager who stole more than $1 million from her over the course of a decade.

“He insinuated himself into our lives and our family,” Tunie said in an emotional victim impact statement this morning, as thieving accountant Joseph Cilibrasi was sentenced to at least 2 ½ years prison.

“He is a menace to society,” the star told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kirke Bartley. “He is a sociopath without conscience.”

Cilibrasi, of Chelsea, had attended weddings and birthdays at the actress’s side since he started working for her in the early 1990s — all the while chiseling away at her fortune at the height of her career.

Between 2000 and 2009, Tunie worked the hardest she ever had, she told the judge — often three jobs at once.

She worked to restore a 100-year-old home with her husband, supported her 77-year-old mother, paid for college for her sisters’ children, and supported numerous charities for children and shut-ins, she told the judge.

Cilibrasi’s lootings may jeopardize her ability to continue all of this, she said, given the financial vagaries of an acting career.

“Show business is fickle, and though I have been blessed with a healthy career, who knows how long that will last?” she said.

“As an African American woman, roles are few and far between,” she said. “And I cannot reasonably hope to replace what was stolen.”

Cilibrasi’s sentence today also covers the $75,000 he admits pocketing from Michael Stern, the conductor and musical director of the Kansas City Symphony and son of the late legendary violinist Isaac Stern.

His sentence could be extended by parole officials to a maximum of 7 ½ years.

“Joseph Cilibrasi is not the sort of opportunist who reaches into a stranger’s open pocket on a subway,” said assistant district attorney Peirce Moser.

“He practices a more cunning sort of criminality. He grooms his victims by building trust and manufacturing false friendships,” the prosecutor said, adding that Cilibrasi “deserves every moment of the time he will serve as a result of this sentence.”

Stern’s own victim impact statement, submitted as a letter to the judge, said that while working for him as an accountant in 2007, Cilibrasi assured him that he’d sent $75,000 on Stern’s behalf to the IRS and the Missouri Department of Revenue as a tax payment.

Instead, Cilibrasi pocketed the money, causing the conductor years of trouble with tax officials and eventually resulting in a physical confrontation outside Cilibrasi’s offices two years ago.

“Joseph Cilibrasi stole this money from me, knowingly and deliberately, all the while keeping up the fictional appearances of continuing to look after my best interests,” the conductor wrote the court.