Widow of Famed Magician & Houdini Biographer Scammed Out of $1M: Court Docs..
UPPER WEST SIDE — With the wave of a wand, her fortune vanished.
A father-and-daughter scam team cast a spell over the frail and elderly widow of a renowned 20th century magician and looted her out of $1 million, court papers charge.
The family of Maurine Christopher says Santos and Jessica Molina posed as her caretakers but were really just controlling her bank accounts to write checks to themselves, to use her credit cards to purchase items at Victoria’s Secret and Juicy Couture and to get her to auction off hundreds of thousands of dollars of magic memorabilia.
The Molinas are accused of siphoning away Christopher’s money over the course of several years — despite the city’s Adult Protective Services twice opening investigations into allegations of financial elder abuse.
And even though Christopher died at 92 in 2013, her family claims in court papers filed July 16 in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court that the scheme hasn’t stopped. They accuse Santos of continuing to live illegally in her apartment in the Turin, a luxury apartment on Central Park West. Read more… ( photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com)