Accountant convicted of stealing from elderly Greenport man headed to prison
Scott Meyer, the Huntington certified public accountant who stole more than $150,000 from a now-deceased Greenport man suffering from Alzheimer’s, was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years of prison time,according to a Suffolk County District Attorney’s office press release
Mr. Meyer, 48, will serve between of 4 1/3 years and 13 years upstate, and he was ordered to pay restitution to all of his victims, the DA’s office said. Mr. Meyer pleaded guilty in March to felony grand larceny and four felony counts of falsifying business records, according to online court records.
He was arrested in 2013 for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his clients — including $159,858 from John Dunphy of Greenport — by writing checks to himself while serving as their accountant, prosecutors said.
Mr. Dunphy, a retired businessman, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and he died in 2014, according to the DA’s press release.
His sister, Frances Dunphy Livernois, addressed the court in a letter read at Tuesday’s sentencing.
“I am outraged to think the person which I trusted and John trusted would boldly steal from him,” she wrote. “It is heartbreaking for me to think about my brother suffering while his cognitive, physical, and functional abilities steadily diminished — and to think he was taken advantage of at a time when he was most vulnerable.”
Ms. Livernois said her brother never realized that Mr. Meyer was stealing his money.
“Due to his mental state of health, my brother John was never aware that he was robbed, but I feel robbed,” she wrote. “The financial destruction in this case may be easily defined, but the emotional, spiritual, and physiological destruction is indescribable. The betrayal and the deception are beyond comprehension.”
Mr. Meyer also stole more than $420,000 from a Huntington cemetery association by allegedly manipulating the president’s poor eyesight; more than $240,000 from a disabled man who is now in an assisted living facility in Los Angeles; and another $30,000 from a condominium complex in Ronkonkoma, prosecutors said.
In total, he took more than $800,000 from his victims, according to prosecutors.
“By carefully choosing his victims to prey on their vulnerabilities, he used his skill as an accountant to steal over $800,000 and he kept the thefts undetected for over five years,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota in the release.
Mr. Spota said in the release that Mr. Meyer used about $140,000 of the stolen money to fund vacations to Aruba, the Bahamas and Disney World between 2008 and 2013.
In 2013, prosecutors said Mr. Meyer had been previously convicted on two federal felony charges for misappropriation of funds and conspiracy.
His accounting license was suspended after those convictions and then reinstated.
Photo caption: An undated mugshot of Scott Meyer.
