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Feds: Ex-hospital exec milked babies' funds BY THOMAS ZAMBITO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Carol Peirce A former top-ranking executive at New York-Presbyterian Hospital took money meant for babies and poor mothers and used it to outfit her opulent Florida home, Manhattan prosecutors said yesterday. Carol Peirce, 51, surrendered early yesterday after she was indicted on charges she defrauded the hospital's Women, Infants and Children program of hundreds of thousands of dollars by padding her expenses with household goods and participating in a kickback scheme with her top assistant. "She used the WIC program as her personal piggy bank for 20 years," federal prosecutor Marcus Asner told Manhattan Federal Judge Gabriel Gorenstein at an afternoon hearing. "This is a person who cannot be trusted." Peirce, wearing a turquoise sweat suit, was released on a $250,000 bond after arriving from Florida on a late night flight. She left the courthouse with her husband and declined to comment. Central to the allegations are some $30,000 in credit card charges for lamps, kitchen appliances, a camcorder, an ice cream maker and dozens of other household items, prosecutors say. The feds say Peirce steered a $317,000 cleaning contract to a firm owned by her administrative assistant who rewarded her boss by sending workers - some of whom were undocumented aliens - to clean her Teaneck, N.J., home twice a week. And she had the WIC program pay out another $15,000 by creating dummy invoices for food and services she claimed were provided by a Queens bodega. Peirce resigned from the hospital in the summer of 2005 after 15 years as director of the WIC program, which provides some 10,000 women and children with nutrition advice and vouchers to buy milk, formula and baby cereal. She moved to Port St. Lucie, Fla., to live with her ailing mother, and now works as the nutrition program director of Palm Beach County. Hospital spokeswoman Myrna Manners said the spending spree was uncovered by Peirce's successor after she quit her $100,000-a-year director's post, prompting the hospital to conduct an investigation and alert authorities. Court papers reveal that the unidentified assistant participated in the scheme and aided the feds in their investigation. Asner said Peirce lives in an opulent home in Port St. Lucie and has accumulated "massive amounts of unexplained wealth." But her attorney said Peirce's mother owns the house and that Peirce dedicated her career to toiling on behalf of low-income mothers and children. "Mrs. Peirce is a hardworking decent woman," attorney John Rieck told Gorenstein. In 2000, Peirce ran unsuccessfully for the Teaneck school board.
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