Nurse to face trial for stealing, using credit card from her dying COVID-19 patient

THE Police in New York City have charged a nurse for stealing a credit card of a former COVID-19 patient while being hospitalized.

The patient’s daughter alleges that the credit card was later used for gasoline and groceries.

Danielle Conti, 43, is being tried for grand larceny, petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property after ringing up charges on two of Anthony Catapano’s credit cards while hospitalized at Staten Island University Hospital with coronavirus, according to the New York Police Department.

Catapano, 70, was hospitalized on April 4 after getting sick from coronavirus, his daughter, Tara Catapano, said. He was lucid when the alleged theft occurred and later died on April 12 from complications of the virus.

“I was in shock and disbelief,” Tara Catapano said. “Obviously, I knew it had to be a hospital employee because visitors weren’t really allowed.”

Tara Catapano, who had been paying her father’s bills since her mother passed away in 2014, said she normally doesn’t track her father’s spending closely.

However, after he died and she received a credit card statement for gasoline — which she said her father always paid for in cash — she then saw the charge date occurred on April 9, when her father was “in the hospital, literally fighting for his life.”

Tara Catapano said the police showed her surveillance footage from a ShopRite of what appeared to be Conti paying for groceries using her father’s card.

“They take an oath to protect, not to harm,” Tara Catapano said.

Other belongings unaccounted for include her father’s eyeglasses, cell phone, cash in the wallet, phone chargers and pictures. It’s not clear what happened to those belongings and it isn’t certain they were intentionally stolen.

Conti, who has worked at the hospital since 2007, is currently on suspicion from work and faces termination in response to the felony charges.