Woman stole more than $12,000 from Lynbrook, East Rockaway group homes, D.A. says

A Queens woman has been arrested and charged with grand larceny and falsifying business records after she stole more than $12,000 from two group homes for the developmentally disabled, one in Lynbrook and another in East Rockaway, where she worked as the resident manager, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced on June 21.

Denessa Yearwood, 36, of Springfield Gardens, was arrested on June 20 by D.A.'s office investigators and charged with third-degree grand larceny and 10 counts of first-degree falsifying business records. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted, and was due back in court on June 22.

According to Rice, since 2001 Yearwood has stolen more than $12,000 by altering or reusing existing receipts for resident expenses in the homes’ ledgers. She was terminated in June 2011 after the theft was discovered during a routine audit of the Lynbrook home’s books that May by a compliance analyst with Adults and Children with Learning and Developmental Disabilities Inc., a nonprofit that provides services to more than 3,000 developmentally disabled children and adults in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

“The caregivers in these homes are supposed to be responsible for the safety and well-being of the residents, not taking advantage of them,” Rice said. “The residents of both homes have been shortchanged for more than a decade, and it is outrageous that this defendant would abuse her position this way.”

Assistant District Attorney Vickie Curran of the D.A.'s Government and Consumer Frauds Bureau is prosecuting the case for the district attorney’s office. The Legal Aid Society of Nassau County is representing Yearwood.