Erin O’Hanlon charged with stealing fashion executive’s ID

A woman accused of stealing a dying fashion executive’s identity and money was arraigned Tuesday, the latest felony case of several in which authorities are investigating her role.

Erin O’Hanlon, 34, was extradited from Florida after Broward County police pulled her over for a traffic stop in August and discovered she was wanted on three identity theft cases, one from state police on Long Island and two in Manhattan.

She had been identified earlier this year after state police released surveillance photos of a woman withdrawing $9,200 at two Long Island Chase branches in the days before Kate Sullivan, 50, of Manhattan, died of cancer Sept. 28, 2014, after a career of working for designers, including Kimora Lee Simmons and Diane von Furstenberg.

O’Hanlon was arraigned on two counts of first-degree identity theft and third-degree grand larceny. She was held pending a $15,000 bail and represented by Legal Aid, which does not comment on cases.

O’Hanlon was extradited in October to New York City, where she was arraigned and held on Rikers Island jail on similar charges in two other cases. She went to a Chase branch in Lake Grove in February and stole more $10,200 from a Manhattan resident, New York City police said, and she also withdrew thousands of dollars from another victim’s accounts in Manhattan last year.

State police investigator Charles Fontanelli said several police jurisdictions, including Suffolk County, will continue looking into what happened. There are about seven cases in which O’Hanlon may be involved, he said.

Saying one of the other victims is a doctor, Fontanelli said authorities want to determine whether there is a health care angle to these identity thefts and whether other people are involved.

He said O’Hanlon had Sullivan’s “pedigree,” from a fake driver’s license in Sullivan’s name to her Social Security number.

The victim’s sister, Sarah Sullivan of Los Angeles, hopes to find answers from O’Hanlon’s arrest.

Sullivan said she had to abandon her dying sister at the hospital when a Chase representative told her that someone was trying to take money from the account. She scrambled to her sister’s apartment to change the locks and to protect her sibling’s financial information.

“I’m dying to know how she got so much access,” Sullivan said.

And just as important, Sullivan said, she wants to know whether O’Hanlon knew her sister was dying as she took the fashion executive’s money: “It would be like the lowest of the low.”