Bodega Owner Blew Wheelchair-Bound Woman's Cash On Honeymoon: DA

QUEENS, NY — A 62-year-old, wheelchair-bound homeless woman needed help cashing a big check from a $4 million settlement she won after getting hit by a subway train. The Roosevelt Island bodega owner she entrusted with the task ended up blowing some of her money on a Las Vegas bachelor party and a Caribbean honeymoon.

That's according to the Queens district attorney, who has accused the bodega owner, 27-year-old Ammar Awawdeh of Brooklyn, and four others of scamming the woman out of $1.5 million over three years. They were arraigned Wednesday on charges including grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

"Her windfall, unfortunately, became the target of alleged scammers," Queens DA Richard Brown said in a statement Thursday. "The victim trusted a bodega owner to cash her check, but temptation proved too overwhelming."

The scheme began in October 2015, the DA's office said. The woman asked Awawdeh — who owns the 579 Island Market store on Roosevelt Island with his father, Yaser Awawdeh — to cash a settlement check worth nearly $800,000, according to prosecutors.

But he instead deposited the money in the business's account at a bank where his friend, Anas Ali, was a bank manager at the time, prosecutors said. The younger Awawdeh allegedly used the $200,000 of the woman's money that he withdrew in October 2015 to bankroll gambling trips, a bachelor party in Las Vegas and honeymooning in Turks and Caicos, the DA's office said.

A few months later, in January 2016, the woman noticed her final settlement check worth more than $866,000 was missing, even though she had put it in a Bible she carried around in her wheelchair, prosecutors said.

An investigation found Ammar Awawdeh had gotten ahold of the check without the woman's permission and deposited it at Ali's bank into the account of a Queens bodega managed by Salah Omairat, the DA's office said.

Ali allowed the deposit even though the check's recipient wasn't there to endorse it and ultimately got $20,000 of the woman's money, according to prosecutors.

Omairat allegedly gave more than $200,000 to himself and another bodega in The Bronx, while more than $200,000 more went to Ammar Awawdeh and the deli he and his father owned, prosecutors said. Another $150,000 went to a Brooklyn bodega owned by Omairat's brother, Mukhtar Omairat, the DA's office said.

Yaser Awawdeh allegedly used the money for a range of personal expenses — he had $50,000 in cashier's checks issued to entities including a car dealership, a wholesale jeweler and a loan server, prosecutors said. He also withdrew more than $40,000 in cash, $10,000 of which he used for the down payment on a car, according to the DA's office.

In the end, the wheelchair-bound victim got just over $100,000 from the checks worth more than $1.6 million, prosecutors said.

Ammar Awawdeh faces up to 25 years in prison, while his father and the Omairat brothers face up to 15 years and Ali faces up to seven, the DA's office said. All five men are due back in court on Dec. 11, according to the DA's office.

(Lead image: Photo from Shutterstock)