A Montefiore Medical Center’s former business clerk and his partner have admitted to taking numerous patient data and using the stolen information to defraud government institutions out of about $1 million.
Wilkins Estrella, 40 years old, living in Hackensack, New Jersey, was employed at Montefiore Medical Center for more or less ten years. His employment was ended in 2020 when an internal review of access records showed that he had been obtaining patient files without authorization. The unauthorized access happened between 2020 and 2022. The review revealed that he tampered with over 4,000 medical documents without any valid work reason, regarded as a HIPAA violation. Montefiore Medical Center informed the HHS’s Office for Civil Rights concerning the data breach and forwarded the issue to authorities for criminal prosecution.
Together with his partner, Charlene Marte, aged 31, from Bronx, New York, Estrella used patient records to sign up for debit card accounts under the patients’ names and sent those debit cards to their own residences and those of members of the family. The couple then used details from several sources to get COVID-19 relief money from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as well as the New York State Department of Labor. Some information used comprises patients’ names, Social Security numbers, and other personally identifiable information (PII) obtained from Montefiore Medical Center.
The partners tried to get hold of $1.6 million in tax refunds, unemployment benefits, and stimulus checks, leading to around $1 million in actual losses. The cash was deposited to the debit cards that the partners had illegally obtained.
On July 28, 2025, Marte confessed to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and is going to be sentenced on November 5, 2025. She’s expected to spend 30 years in prison. On August 7, 2025, Estrella was admitted to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud in addition to one count of wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health data. Estrella is likely to face up to 30 years imprisonment for the wire and bank fraud counts, and around 10 years imprisonment for the wrongful disclosure charge, and will be sentenced on December 1, 2025. Marte and Estrella are furthermore answerable for $951,618.20 in damages and a similar sum in compensation.
Wilkins Estrella stole the personal data of numerous people, including patients in the hospital, and used this information together with his lover, Charlene Marte, to claim funds that were designed to support struggling U.S. citizens at the time of the pandemic. Defrauding government programs causes harm to all New Yorkers and should be stopped.