A petite bottle-blonde befriended lonely elderly men and conned them out of more than $1 million, authorities charged yesterday.
Natasha Marks, 19, was held on $500,000 bail in Queens Supreme Court yesterday, where she whimpered as Assistant DA Kristen Kane said she could face life in prison because the top charge is grand larceny as a hate crime – for targeting old people.
Kane said Marks befriended two senior citizens and gave them a down-onher luck story about having breast cancer and big medical bills.
But Marks is not sick and was just conning the two because they were “old and lonely” men, Kane said.
According to a criminal complaint, 85-year-old Louis Bruno, of Howard Beach, encountered Marks in a supermarket.
She told him her name was “Sandy,” and after a few conversations hit him up for $249,000 in cash.
And then, without his knowledge, she allegedly acquired his power of attorney and mortgaged his home.
She put the $560,000 she got from that in a bank account in Bruno’s name. But he wasn’t aware of the account or that she had access to the funds.
Another elderly man, 79-year-old Julius Rosenberg, met the teen who identified herself as “Christina Hilton” at a Staples store in Bayside.
They exchanged numbers and it wasn’t long before she was asking for $5,000 cash, officials said.
Kane said her take could exceed $1 million.