Metro

Inside charity ‘scam’

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A bunch of hardened gangbangers have gone from hustling on the street corner to hustling Wall Street.

Thugs from gangs such as the Crips and Bloods ran a brazen, $2 million identity-theft ring that targeted some of New York’s wealthiest residents and high-end charities, authorities said yesterday.

The larcenous lowlifes went after big game such as billionaire Ira Rennert, Ron Lauder’s son-in-law Eric Zinterhofer, and acid-washed-jeans mogul Eric Rothfeld.

The crooks even targeted charities popular with the upper crust, including the United Jewish Appeal-Federation and the Starr Foundation, chaired by former American Insurance Group Inc. CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, court filings say.

They also tried to make a fast break on NBA commissioner David Stern by stealing checks from him before being thwarted, sources told The Post.

One of the victims was Paula Sarnoff Oreck, an Upper East Side philanthropist who’s the niece of former RCA head David Sarnoff and ex-wife of Oreck vacuum- cleaner big David Oreck.

Paula told The Post she was outraged by what was, in effect, a high-tech mugging by street thugs.

“I’m just pissed,” she said.

She added she’d been ripped off for $15,000 by phony checks drawn from her account at Chase earlier this year, and then again to the tune of $18,000 six months later.

Authorities said the scammers — including members of the Brooklyn gang the Outlaws, the Bloods and the Crips — used insiders at the UJA, Chase Bank and Akam real estate to get the financial information of well more than 1,000 people.

They used the information to either drain money from their victims’ accounts or sell to other crooks.

Three Chase tellers were among the 55 charged yesterday with being part of the ring.

Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office identified one of the main cogs in the scam as Tracey Nelson, 24, who worked as a UJA clerk, processing check and credit-card donations.

DA Cyrus Vance said Nelson “betrayed” her position of trust by spiriting information from hundreds of donors that she then sold to the gang members.

She smuggled out some of the info simply by taking pictures with her smartphone of checks people had sent in, the DA said.

The identity thieves would then use that information to draw up phony checks or open up credit-card accounts in the person’s name.

Officials said the scam — which dates to the spring of 2010 — began to unravel when postal workers in Brooklyn told cops about some suspicious money orders that were regularly coming into their branch.

Additional reporting by Jeane MacIntosh and Rebecca Harshbarger