Francine Dal-Bo, of Oceanside, charged with stealing $80G in pension payments paid to dead father, DA says

An Oceanside woman was arrested and charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing more than $80,000 worth of pension payments and Medicare checks meant for her dead father, officials said.

Francine Dal-Bo, 52, was charged Wednesday with one count of grand larceny in the second degree and one count of grand larceny in the third degree at Nassau County District Court, according to a news release from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly.

Dal-Bo pleaded not guilty to the charges, said her attorney, Robert Schalk. She is due back in court July 6.

Dal-Bo’s father, a former Town of Hempstead Highway Department worker, died in October 2022, and under his pension plan, payments should have ceased after his death, the release said.

But instead of reporting his death, authorities say Dal-Bo allegedly received $78,157 in pension payments and $4,047 in Medicare reimbursement checks over two years, which she used to pay her mortgage and credit card bills.

Dal-Bo also allegedly endorsed and deposited Medicare checks from the Town of Hempstead, using the money for personal expenses, according to the release.

Schalk said the payments were a misunderstanding.

“This was an unfortunate misunderstanding where a check was being deposited into a trust account," Schalk told Newsday on Friday. "My client has pleaded not guilty, and intends to fight through the court process."

Dal-Bo faces up to 15 years in prison on the second-degree grand larceny charge, according to the district attorney's office.

A handful of Long Islanders have been charged with pension theft in the past five years, including a Hempstead woman who pleaded guilty in 2022 to stealing more than $240,000 in state pension benefits intended for her deceased mother, a former employee of the Malverne School District, Newsday reported.

The State Comptroller’s office continually monitors pension payments for fraud, said Nelson Sheingold, counsel to comptroller DiNapoli. Theft has a direct impact on retired state employees, who on average receive about $28,500 pension, Sheingold said, noting that the average excludes police pensions.

“It is a direct impact in getting the money back, because it does fund the pension benefits,” Sheingold said.

The Comptroller’s Office had assisted with more than 70 arrests and recovering $7.3 million in pension funds since 2010, according to the office.