State of New York

Supreme Court, Appellate Division

Third Judicial Department

Decided and Entered: January 22, 2015 104407 

________________________________

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF 

NEW YORK,

Respondent,

v MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ROSE REEVES,

Appellant.

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Calendar Date: November 18, 2014

Before: Lahtinen, J.P., McCarthy, Rose, Egan Jr. and Clark, JJ.

__________

Michael P. Graven, Owego, for appellant, and appellant 

pro se.

Weeden A. Wetmore, District Attorney, Elmira, for

respondent.

__________

Clark, J.

Appeal from a judgment of the County Court of Schuyler

County (Argetsinger, J.), rendered January 13, 2011, upon a

verdict convicting defendant of the crimes of grand larceny in

the second degree and forgery in the second degree (three

counts).

After defendant stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from

the victim, her elderly sister-in-law, she was charged with grand

larceny in the second degree. Defendant was also charged with

three counts of forgery in the second degree as the result of

endorsing a check payable to the victim, as well as two documents

purportedly signed by the victim that enabled defendant to access

and transfer funds held in a certificate of deposit. Following a
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jury trial, defendant was convicted as charged. County Court

sentenced her to, among other things, five years of probation

that included six months of electronic home monitoring. County

Court further directed her to pay restitution in the amount of

$361,169. Defendant appeals, and we now affirm.

Initially, defendant failed to renew her motion to dismiss

the charges at the close of her proof and, as such, her

contention that the verdict is not supported by legally

sufficient evidence is unpreserved for our review (see People v

Kolupa, 13 NY3d 786, 787 [2009]; People v Valverde, 122 AD3d

1074, 1075 [2014]). We will nevertheless determine whether all

the elements of the charged crimes were proven beyond a

reasonable doubt in weighing the probative force of conflicting

testimony and the strength of conflicting inferences to assess

whether the verdict is against the weight of the evidence

(see People v Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348-349 [2007]; People v

Valverde, 122 AD3d at 1075).

In that regard, defendant assisted the victim as she

declined physically in the several years prior to her death and,

as such, was named as a joint owner of the victim's checking

account and was granted a limited power of attorney that did not

include any authority over banking transactions. Joseph Fazzary

is an attorney and was very familiar with both defendant and the

victim, not only because he was their nephew, but also because he

had employed defendant for several years and had assisted the

victim with her financial affairs.1 Fazzary was named as

executor of the victim's estate and, upon her death in 2008,

began collecting information about her assets. In so doing, he

uncovered documentary evidence that defendant had siphoned off

hundreds of thousands of dollars from the victim by various

means, including misrepresenting the scope of her power of

attorney to access certain funds and forging the victim's

signature on documents designed to make her a joint owner of

others (cf. People v Vandermuelen, 42 AD3d 667, 668-669 [2007],

1 Fazzary is also the Schuyler County District Attorney

and, accordingly, a special prosecutor was appointed to handle

the present case (see County Law § 701).
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lv denied 9 NY3d 965 [2007]). Fazzary and others testified that

this activity was totally inconsistent with the prior behavior of

the victim, who was known to be extremely frugal. Defendant

further spent substantial sums of money, with no obvious source,

at a casino during the period in question. Witnesses testified

that the victim did not approve of gambling, and that she would

not have given defendant any funds for that purpose. 

With regard to the forgery charges, Fazzary was familiar

with the handwriting of both defendant and the victim, and he

testified that defendant had forged the victim's signature upon

two documents used to make defendant a joint owner of a

certificate of deposit owned by the victim (see People v Clark,

122 AD2d 389, 390 [1986], lv denied 68 NY2d 913 [1986]). Fazzary

also testified that defendant had forged the victim's endorsement

on a check from the proceeds of another certificate of deposit

that had been closed out. Defendant testified that the victim

gifted her large sums of money and that her casino winnings had

bankrolled her gambling, and otherwise denied having acted

improperly, but the jury plainly chose to credit the extensive

evidence of defendant's financial wrongdoing over her conflicting

testimony. Thus, deferring to the credibility determination of

the jury, we cannot say that the verdict was against the weight

of the evidence (see People v Antilla, 77 NY2d 853, 854-855

[1991]; People v Rampersaud, 52 AD3d 336, 337 [2008], lv

denied 11 NY3d 740 [2008]). 

Defendant's remaining arguments are similarly unavailing

and require only a brief mention. County Court properly admitted

bank records regarding various accounts held by the victim

because the testimony of bank employees "was sufficient to

qualify such documents as business records within the meaning of

CPLR 4518, and [the witnesses'] lack of personal knowledge went

to the weight, not the admissibility of the" records (William

Conover, Inc. v Waldorf, 251 AD2d 727, 728 [1998] [internal

citations omitted]; see CPLR 4518 [a]; People v Kennedy, 68 NY2d

569, 579-580 [1986]). County Court further acted appropriately

in allowing the jury to consider evidence of uncharged forged

checks that was "offered to prove defendant's intent to commit

the specific crimes charged" (People v Bayne, 82 NY2d 673, 676

[1993]; see People v Scotti, 232 AD2d 775, 776 [1996], lv
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denied 89 NY2d 946 [1997]). Defendant's remaining contentions

have been considered and found to lack merit.

Lahtinen, J.P., McCarthy, Rose and Egan Jr., JJ., concur.

ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed.

ENTER:

Robert D. Mayberger

Clerk of the Court