Jul 15, 2008 7:57 pm US/Eastern
Woman Gets 10+ Years For NY-Florida Adoption Scam
NEW YORK (AP) ―
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Not only is Judith Leekin accused of abusing 11 adopted children, she's now being called a scam artist and ACS is under fire for paying her for years while the alleged abuse was going on.
CBS
A New York judge has sentenced a Florida woman to nearly 11 years in prison for using fictitious names and repeatedly lying to adopt 11 disabled children. Authorities say she pocketed over $1 million and then abused the children.
Judge Richard Berman sentenced 63-year-old Judith Leekin in Manhattan on Tuesday.
She also faces charges in Florida for the fraud and alleged abuse that stretched from 1988 until last year. She lived in York for half of the time.
Leekin is required to forfeit $1.68 million in subsidies as part of a plea deal.
She admitted using fake names to adopt the children and producing phony school report cards when they didn't go to school. She also has admitted restraining the children with plastic ties.
Leekin, a high school dropout from Trinidad, adopted the children in New York between 1988 and 1996. They all moved to Florida in 1998.
Florida authorities accused Leekin in July 2007 of mistreating the children at her home in Port St. Lucie, about 100 miles north of Miami.
They often were handcuffed, battered, deprived of food and medicine and locked in a room, authorities said. An elaborate surveillance system let Leekin keep watch over her charges via closed-circuit monitors, according to police.
Leekin never sent the children to school, and she would dead-bolt them in a passageway to hide them from unexpected visitors, authorities said.
The children, many afflicted by both physical and mental problems, told police she would threaten to shoot them or cut off their heads if they spoke out.
Prosecutors say Leekin used the adoption money to support a lavish lifestyle and submitted phony report cards and other information to keep the subsidies coming -- even after removing one of the children from her home in 2000.
The children are now 16 to 28. Nine are in foster or group homes, officials say. A tenth lives on his own in Florida.
Investigators also suspect that Leekin may have killed one of them, a boy named Shane Graham, and disposed of the body. Officials declined to discuss Graham.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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