Prosecutors in the Brooke Astor swindle trial say the beloved philanthropist’s son decided in 2005 that his mother wasn’t paying him enough to loot her finances — and so nearly tripled his own salary as her financial manager.
Anthony Marshall decreed himself worth $1.4 million a year, which works out to a tidy $116,666 a month.
Before that, he’d been getting a paltry $37,000 a month.
To sweeten the deal, he made his big raise retroactive to the previous year, and instructed Astor’s bookkeeper, Lourdes Hilario, to immediately pay him the full past-due amount — a $950,000 lump sum to be wire-transferred directly into his Citibank account, the bookkeeper testified yesterday.
Marshall and his wife, Charlene, ran right out and bought a $900,000 yacht, naming it The General Russell after Astor’s Marine commandant father, prosecutors told jurors in opening statements 2½ months ago. Each month, Marshall tapped Astor’s own funds to pay the skipper’s $52,000-a-year salary, they charge.