Health Aide Stole $335k From Couple
Winston Nguyen is showing a lot of remorse. The 32-year-old former assistant to a couple in their 90s, ultimately exposed by the couple’s daughter-in-law as a scam artist, has admitted to robbing them of their life savings. “It really pains me, in a way, that I betrayed their trust,” said Nguyen outside a courtroom on October 3rd.
“They treated him like a son,” said Rand Stoll, reminiscing about the young man who his parents, Bernard and Florence Stoll, welcomed into their posh Park Avenue apartment as a home health aide in late 2009. Nguyen, then 23, was employed to help the wheelchair-bound couple with daily tasks, and went on, from 2015 to 2017, to siphon $335,000 from their bank accounts and credit cards. The couple in question were easy targets for Nguyen not only because of their financial status and old age, but also the fact that Bernard, 98, is blind.
For nine years, Nguyen escorted the nonagenarian couple on their walks, carried their groceries and read news articles to Bernard. Rand Stoll said he parlayed his way into accessing their financial records by appearing to be fastidious and dedicated in his work, earning the trust of the couple who in turn rewarded him with lavish vacations, food and clothes.
At the New York Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing, Nguyen didn’t get a chance to speak in court as the hearing was postponed, but was eager to express himself outside the courtroom.”I deeply regret what I did and wish I could apologize to them for my actions,” he said, adding that the Stolls had regarded him fondly as a sort of “jack of all trades” who could help them run errands and do chores. When asked if there was a motive for stealing from them, his gaze turned downward as he mumbled, offering no justification: “They treated me well.”
That relationship with the Stolls came to an end in 2017 when Veronique Perrin, Rand Stoll’s ex-wife, detected unusual activity on Florence Stoll’s credit card, dug deep and found a web of deceit and lies, and promptly reported the theft to the police. “He was like a robot,” she said. “The cops arrived, guns blazing and walkie talkies in hand, and he invited them to have coffee and biscuits. I was shaking in my shoes and Nguyen acted like it was a cocktail party,” she recalled. “It was freaky.”
Nguyen was indicted by a grand jury under multiple counts of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, Identity Theft in the First Degree, and Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, among other charges. Rand Stoll recollected how he initially pled not guilty, denied everything and hired an attorney.
The extent of his deception, unveiled following his arrest, stretched from carefully orchestrated to blatantly criminal: bank statements were diverted to his home address, statements were altered to exclude his purchases, a bar was placed on the couple’s phone line to prevent calls from creditors, and false email addresses were made to impersonate Rand Stoll.
After learning of Nguyen’s duplicity, Perrin said Bernard and Florence were “devastated and appalled”, and after enduring the hassle of endless court dates and giving statements to the police, they were, above all, angry that they had not foreseen this.
And for a very good reason: Nguyen had previously embezzled money from the Stolls. Caught in the act, Nguyen repented to Bernard and admitted that he had mental illness. According to Rand Stoll, Bernard felt pity for him and arranged a plan for Nguyen to pay them back the stolen amount of money, and gave him a second chance to come back and work for them.
Citing this incident, references that did not check out and schools Nguyen said he attended but did not, Perrin expressed disdain for her ex-husband’s lack of caution: “I don’t understand why they wanted to have him around again.”
Perrin said his peculiar calmness at the time of his arrest and behavior were, to her, obvious red flags of mental illness. “He betrayed the trust of two people with diminished mental and physical capacity. An old woman on her deathbed and an old man who couldn’t see. To do something so unconscionable he had to have some level of mental illness,” said Perrin.
After changing his plea to guilty, Nguyen was released from Rikers without bail, and is awaiting sentencing. Keeping himself busy fighting for prisoners rights, while at Rikers he called Mayor Bill de Blasio on his radio show twice to gripe about prison conditions, and is filing a lawsuit against Department of Corrections chief Cynthia Brann for newspaper censorship in prison. He apparently kept a log of every page removed from the papers.
“I think a lot of my motivation came from a feeling like I had to do things for people in order for them to like me, and that led me to very bad place,” said Nguyen as he and defense attorney Arnold Levine sorted their papers on a bench near the courtroom. The “people” Nguyen referred to were presumably his pals that benefitted from free holidays. “He was jet-setting with his friends every weekend,” confirmed Rand Stoll. “Miami to Paris and the West Coast, living the life of a rockstar.”
Nguyen further explained that what happened was not planned; the hanky-panky slowly got out of control as he started spending the stolen money on Broadway tickets and ballet performances. “He was obsessed with ballerinas!” exclaimed Perrin. “Look him up and you’ll see him all dressed up at fancy black tie affairs with ballerinas from New York Ballet Theater.” She pointed out that she would have better understood Nguyen’s motives if he had stolen the money out of desperation or despair; she couldn’t believe he used it to live the high life and feed his ballet fetish. When he appeared on TV game show Jeopardy in 2014, Nguyen admitted to a deep obsession with the art of ballet, which he indulged by collecting pointe shoes signed by famous ballerinas.
Levine explained that having come to face his demons, Nguyen is now seeking treatment. “I’ve had a lot of therapy in the last two years; I know that I have always struggled with depression and feeling like I have to buy people’s love,” admitted Nguyen. “I take full responsibility for my actions but now there are things that I am willing to look at and get treated.”
“You have to ask for help, when you know you need it,” Nguyen added, referring to seeking treatment for his mental health disorder, as he and Levine made way to the elevators.
Perrin stands by her perception of him as a mentally ill man, and concedes that her children, who would visit their grandparents often, always described Nguyen as caring, devoted and helpful. Rand Stoll, on the other hand, believes he belongs behind bars. “He’s a dangerous man. A crook. And he’ll do it again.”
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