An Upper East Side home health aide squandered life-saving money from her longtime patient’s $2 million estate — funds the wealthy insurance exec wanted her profoundly disabled niece to inherit, the state attorney general’s office alleged in court papers.
Janina Lewandowska failed “to fully and accurately account” for all of Dolores Morrissey’s assets, and “preferred her own interests over those of estate beneficiaries,” the attorney general told the Manhattan Surrogate Court in May.
Morrissey, CEO of the Mutual of America Insurance Company who died in 2016 at age 88, appointed her caregiver, Lewandowska, as executor of her estate. She left $1 million to her niece, Meryn Klabouch, who suffers from debilitating multiple sclerosis that’s left her paralyzed and requires “between $20,000-$30,000” a month for the treatments “necessary to keep her alive,” court papers showed.
But Lewandowska never doled out the dough, and the 74-year-old Klabouch — who has now turned to GoFundMe in her financial struggle to pay her living and medical expenses — challenged her handling of the estate in court.
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The AG’s office found that Lewandowska engaged in “self-dealing” and drained Morrissey’s funds over the course of the seven years. Along with upwards of $21,000 in unlabeled “reimbursements,” Lewandowska has used Morrissey’s funds for various travel expenses, insurance bills, legal fees, bank payments and other expenses the AG deemed “excessive” and “unnecessary.”
The AG flagged more than a dozen expenses for which Lewandowska has allegedly yet to sufficiently explain, according to court papers. The case is due in court later this month.
“Any allegations have only been unsupported without any proof disclosed or alleged,” Lewandowska’s lawyer, Robert Sikorski, told The Post.
