Clerk charged in stealing $1 million

NEW YORK - A former clerk at the Archdiocese of New York got hired despite a prior theft conviction, and then spent more than seven years covertly writing hundreds of checks to a relative so she could steal more than $1 million in money used to oversee schools, prosecutors and the archdiocese said Monday.

By writing checks to her son, yet logging them as payments for legitimate church expenses, Anita Collins acquired an extensive doll collection, $23,000 worth of clothes from Barney's and Brooks Brothers, $19,000 worth of items from an Irish gift shop and other luxuries while working a $35,000-to-$50,000-a-year job at the Roman Catholic archdiocese, prosecutors said as she was arraigned on grand larceny and other charges.

"She held herself out to be a religious woman, going to church every day, yet behind their backs she would lie and steal," Assistant District Attorney Amy Justiniano said.

Collins, 67, was being held on $750,000 bond. Defense lawyer Howard Simmons said Collins, who lives with a 30-year-old daughter contending with cancer, wasn't in a position to post the bail. "She's accepting her fate" of being jailed, at least for now, said Simmons.

Prosecutors said Collins steadily stole from the church's Education Department by writing more than 450 checks to one of her sons, each check for less than $2,500 - the threshold for needing a higher-up's approval, Justiniano said. Collins recorded them as payments for such items as power bills or office supplies, archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said.

Collins deposited the money into an account she shared with one of her sons, prosecutors said.

Most of the archdiocese has had a system that would catch such discrepancies for some years. The Education Department, where Collins worked, adopted the system more recently, Zwilling said.

Collins was convicted in 1999 of a felony charge of stealing more than $50,000 from a staffing agency. She received probation.