A Montefiore Medical Center’s ex-business clerk and his partner have admitted to stealing thousands of patient documents and using the stolen information to defraud government organizations out of roughly $1 million.
A 40-year-old Wilkins Estrella, residing in Hackensack, New Jersey, worked at the Bronx Hospital for about 10 years. His work was terminated in 2020 when an internal audit of access logs confirmed that he had been viewing patient documents without authorization, which is considered a HIPAA violation. The unauthorized access occurred from 2020 to 2022. The review showed that he accessed more than 4,000 medical files without any legitimate work purpose for doing so. Montefiore Medical Center notified the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights about the data breach and referred the matter to law enforcement for criminal prosecution.
With his lover, Charlene Marte, 31 years old, living in the Bronx, New York, Estrella misused patient information to get debit card accounts in the patients’ names and sent those cards to their own addresses and those of relatives. The partners then used details from different sources to acquire COVID-19 relief money from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the New York State Department of Labor. Some information used includes patients’ names, Social Security numbers, and other personally identifiable information (PII) taken from Montefiore Medical Center.
The couple attempted to get $1.6 million in tax refunds, stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits, totaling about $1 million in actual losses. The cash was put in the debit cards that the lovers had fraudulently acquired.
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 looking to spend 30 years in prison. On August 7, 2025, Estrella confessed guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud and one count of wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health data. Estrella is expecting a maximum 30-year jail term for the bank and wire fraud counts, and a maximum of 10 years imprisonment for the wrongful disclosure charge, and will be sentenced on December 1, 2025. Estrella and Marte are likewise accountable for $951,618.20 in forfeiture and the same amount in refund.
Wilkins Estrella stole the confidential data of countless people, including hospital patients, and took this information, together with his lover, Charlene Marte, to claim cash that was meant to help struggling people in America during the pandemic. Defrauding federal programs negatively affects all New Yorkers and must be stopped.
