NYC investigator caught on damning video rifling through dead man’s items, allegedly pocketing nearly $500 — before promptly resigning: ‘Disgraceful’
A city investigator once heralded by the NYPD for turning in drugs was caught on video rifling through a dead man’s belongings and allegedly stealing nearly $500 in cash plus jewelry, The Post has learned.
The alleged theft left the Bronx man’s grieving niece scrambling to give him a decent burial — and exposed a systemic weakness that corrupt city officials have used for decades to exploit the property of New York’s dead.
After William Figueroa, 71, died alone in his Belmont apartment on Dec. 5 of a heart attack, his motion-activated, three-camera video surveillance system kept on running.
Ten days later, Felix R. Conde, a staff investigator in the Bronx Public Administrator’s Office, was dispatched to Figueroa’s cramped one-bedroom pad to tally his assets.
As the Bronx’s only full-time, $63,000-a-year “decedent property agent,” Conde was responsible for recovering valuables from the residences of those who die alone and without a will and bringing them to the PA’s office, through which their estates are to be settled by the county Surrogate’s Court.
Conde, 62, an experienced agent with five years on the job, rummaged through Figueroa’s flat and pocketed some of the precious items, rather than placing them in clear evidence bags, the video obtained by The Post showed.
The investigator – clad in an official jacket and cap, with a badge hanging around his neck – all but ransacked Figueroa’s home, turning up his mattress, searching his freezer, and pawing through toolboxes, garment bags, and jacket pockets, images showed.
The disturbing video was automatically uploaded to the former landscaper’s phone, where they were discovered by Elizabeth Ayala, 63, Figueroa’s niece.
“It’s very disgraceful,” Ayala told The Post. “What a corrupt world we live in. That man took an oath to go into somebody’s apartment and do right by this person.”
Bronx Public Administrator Matilde Sanchez confirmed Conde admitted taking $492 in cash, a chain, and a ring from Figueroa’s home — but called his actions “a screw-up.”
“In this particular case, he didn’t follow the procedures,” Sanchez said, claiming that the valuables were eventually “vouchered” into her office’s tracking system.
When reached by The Post by phone, Conde said, “Nothing was taken…there was just no plastic bags at that moment.”
But Ayala accused Conde of filching more money from her uncle’s apartment than he confessed to having taken.
“It wasn’t $400 – he had more,” she asserted. “Willie had enough money to bury himself … maybe $8,000 for somebody to bury him.”
On Jan. 4, an outraged Ayala brought the damning video to Sanchez’s Grand Concourse office. At that point, Sanchez said, Conde promptly resigned from his post.
“You know, sometimes things don’t get done right away,” Sanchez said, bizarrely praising Conde as “really, basically, an honest guy.”
“But, you know, people sometimes, they don’t do it the way it’s supposed to be done,” Sanchez said.
Figueroa’s body remains in a city morgue — with a looming Feb. 21 deadline before being taken to Hart Island for burial in a mass grave.
“He didn’t have no family…I don’t have no money for this,” Ayala said. “I just want Willie to be buried like a human being and not thrown like a dog in potter’s field.”
Sanchez vowed to reform her office’s procedures in the wake of the incident.
“We’re going to take a lot more care,” she said. “The deputy or myself are going to go out with” investigators as they perform residence inspections.
Ayala blamed Sanchez for mismanagement.
“If you’re running a unit, you’re responsible for everyone who’s working underneath you,” Ayala said. “And she wasn’t doing her job, obviously, because this happened.”
The scandal is the latest in a long line of lapses in the city’s five public administrator’s offices.
In 1986, an undercover sting operation by city and state investigation agencies exposed three city PA employees – two in the Brooklyn office and one in The Bronx – stealing cash and valuables that investigators had placed for them to find. Charges against all three were dismissed – and one even returned to work at the Brooklyn PA’s office.
A former case manager at the Brooklyn PA’s office spent 60 days behind bars in 2019 after pleading guilty to stealing over $78,000 from eight decedents’ estates while on the job.
A 2021 audit released by then-comptroller Scott Stringer revealed troubling deficiencies in the Brooklyn PA’s office — including persistent failures to properly document personal property held for estates pending their resolution.
Figueroa’s phone is now in the hands of Milton Yu, Inspector General for Fiduciary Appointments in the Office of Court Administration, who has opened an official investigation.
With the money raised through a GoFundMe, Ayala hopes to provide “a dignified funeral” for Figueroa.
However, she said, “we weren’t supposed to be begging for money, because Willy had the money to be buried.”
