DA:  Astor’s Son ‘Tripled’ Own Salary
Laura Italiano
July 2, 2009
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07022009/news/regionalnews/manhattan/astors_son_tripled_own_salary_to_116k_a__177228.htm
Why just swindle your 103-year-old mother when you can give yourself a big raise for doing it?

Prosecutors in the Brooke Astor swindle trial say the beloved philanthropist’s son decided in 2005 that his mother wasn’t paying him enough to manage her money so he nearly tripled his own salary.

He decreed himself worth $1.4 million a year, which works out to a tidy $116,666 a month.

Before that, he’d been getting a paltry $37,000 a month.

To sweeten the deal, he made his big raise retroactive to the previous year, and instructed Astor’s bookkeeper, Lourdes Hilario, to immediately pay him the full past-due amount — a $950,000 lump sum to be wire-transferred directly into his CitiBank account, the bookkeeper testified this morning.

Marshall and his wife, Charlene, ran right out and bought a $900,000 yacht, gallingly naming it after Astor’s Marine Commandant father — The General Russell, prosecutors told jurors in opening statements two and a half months ago. Each month, Marshall’s tapped Astor’s funds to pay the skipper’s $52,000 a year salary, they charge.

Meanwhile, Marshall allegedly stinted on Astor’s own necessary expenses. Windows went unrepaired in her Park Avenue apartment, requests for air purifiers and a stairway safety gate went ignored, beloved staff were fired and the Westchester County estate where she’d hoped to die was shuttered, they argue.

This morning Hilario showed jurors Marshall’s letter, from August 2008, instructing her to immediately begin cutting him the bigger paychecks. He’d calculated his new $1.4 million annual salary based on a 1 percent of Astor’s estimated $140 million in assets.

Marshall has countered that he was a loving son who deserved the raise after growing Astor’s assets significantly during decades of prudent money management. He is accused of strong-arming the Alzheimer’s sufferer out of more than $60 million in gifts and bequests, but insists that despite her dementia she gave him everything willingly, during moments of lucidity.

Anthony Marshall, Brooke Astor’s son, gave himself $1M raise for taking mom’s fortune
Melissa Grace/Corky Siemaszko
July 2, 2009
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/02/2009-07-02_raise_for_a_job_well_done_.html
Brooke Astor’s son gave himself a $1 million raise for managing his mom’s money - after she’d already signed away her fortune to him.

Anthony Marshall explained in a letter dated Aug. 1, 2005, the decision was made “in consultation” with his lawyer pal Francis Morrissey, according to the socialite’s bookkeeper, Lourdes Hilario, who testified Thursday at Marshall’s fraud trial.

The letter was written a year after an Alzheimer’s-addled Astor, under what prosecutors contend were suspicious circumstances, signed three codicils to her wills that gave Marshall control of her $185 million fortune.

In tripling his salary from $37,000 to $116,666 a month, Marshall also made the raise retroactive and demanded that a lump sum of $920,000 be transfered to his CitiBank account, Hilario said.

Marshall then used the money to buy a $920,000 yacht and used more of his mom’s money to pay skipper Robert Zielinski’s $52,000-a-year salary, Hilario said.

“Who ordered you to pay Robert Zielinski on the payroll?” Assistant District Attorney Peirce Moser asked.

“Mr. Marshall did,” Hilario replied.

Marshall, 85, and Morrissey, 66, are accused to taking advantage of Astor’s senility to rip her off.

Astor was 103 when Marshall gave himself the raise. She died two years later in 2007.

While Marshall and his wife Charlene were plying the waters aboard The General Russell, prosecutors said they left the demented doyenne to languish on a urine stained-couch in a Park Ave. duplex filled with dog feces.

Those horrific conditions led to elder abuse accusations by Marshall’s son, Philip, and eventually to the criminal charges against his father and Morrissey. Both men insist they are innocent and that Astor was lucid when she signed the codicils.