Men Tried To Steal $2M From Dead Manhattan Woman, Feds Say

NEW YORK, NY — Two men tried to steal $2 million from a dead woman who lived in the Manhattan apartment building where they worked, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Luis Mercado of Manhattan and Stephen Decker of Secaucus, N.J., were arrested Wednesday on charges including wire fraud and identity theft in connection with their nearly yearlong scheme, prosecutors said.

The pair tried to cover up their crimes by using cash they got from selling the dead woman's stock certificates to buy gold coins, prosecutors alleged.

"As alleged, when Decker and Mercado cashed out on stolen stock certificates, their right to ownership was nothing more than fool’s gold," William Sweeney, the FBI's assistant director in New York, said in a statement. "Not only did the certificates not belong to them, their rightful owner was an elderly deceased woman with no representatives to stake her claim."

Mercado and Decker worked in the Manhattan apartment building where the woman lived, prosecutors said. They allegedly stole the valuable stock certificates from her apartment after she died in March 2016.

They put the stocks in a bank account they opened in the woman's name before selling them in September 2016, leaving more than $2 million in cash in the account, prosecutors said.

Three months later, Mercado and Decker started trying to buy more than $2 million in gold coins using that money, prosecutors said. Their three-month effort to convert the cash into gold included a phone call to a gold broker in California, prosecutors said.

Mercado and Decker were set to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The first two charges carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence, while the third carries a maximum two-year sentence, prosecutors said.

Information for Mercado's and Decker's defense attorneys was not immediately available in online court records.

(Lead image via Shutterstock)