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A former doorman on the Upper West Side who admitted to stealing nearly $500,000 from an elderly couple in his building has officially been sentenced.
Alfredo Mateo, 38, will serve between one and three years in state prison, following a guilty plea earlier this year to charges of grand larceny and identity theft. In addition to the prison term, the sentence includes the forfeiture of $115,638 and a civil judgment in favor of the victims.
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The sentencing was handed down in New York State Supreme Court on October 1, according to an update from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.Mateo’s scheme first came to light after the husband—who had been living with his wife at 380 Riverside Drive, near West 110th Street—passed away in September 2022. With the wife under legal guardianship in a nursing home and deemed mentally incapacitated, Mateo began transferring funds from their accounts into his own. Within 24 hours of the husband’s death, he had deposited the first of 26 fraudulent checks, many of which he had written to himself under misleading pretenses.
Over the following months, Mateo also siphoned pension payments meant for the wife, a retired city schoolteacher. Prosecutors said he submitted forged documents to the Teachers’ Retirement System to reroute her annuity checks to his personal bank account—even after her death in July 2023. He also allegedly made multiple calls to the pension system pretending to be the woman, at one point altering his voice to mimic an elderly female.
In total, Mateo was accused of stealing $477,685 from the couple, who spent decades building their savings. At the time of the plea, D.A. Alvin Bragg described the theft as a “disturbing fraud,” vowing to protect vulnerable New Yorkers from financial exploitation.
“Alfredo Mateo will now be held accountable for stealing from a retired schoolteacher and her husband,” Bragg said following the sentencing. “He used his access as a doorman to drain their bank accounts, stealing hundreds of thousands of their hard-earned money. We will not allow fraudsters to exploit older New Yorkers for their own personal financial gain.”
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Mateo was initially indicted in October 2024, and entered his guilty plea in May 2025. His case drew widespread attention due to the sheer size of the theft and the calculated nature of the fraud.380 Riverside Drive is a prewar co-op building just off Riverside Park. Mateo had worked there for several years before his arrest.
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