Russian Immigrant's 'Shtetl' Defense Mitigates Jail Time For Self-Made Millionairess Bagged For Pocketing $77K+ In Federal Low-Income Rent Subsidies; Agreed To Serve 1+ Year, Only Gets 2 Months

In New York City, the New York Post reports:

• She’s headed for a different kind of public housing now.
  
  A self-made millionairess was sentenced to two months in the slammer [] for scamming nearly $80,000 in rent subsidies by illegally leasing a taxpayer-subsidized apartment after striking it rich in real estate.
  
  Russian immigrant Nataliya Dyakovskaya, 65, had agreed to serve more than a year behind bars in a plea deal with the feds, but caught a big break after her lawyer blamed her “crazy” crime on a “shtetl mentality,” using the Yiddish word for the former Jewish villages of Eastern Europe.
  
  “She has always believed that, notwithstanding her good luck and her success, she was afraid, and still is, that everything could disappear in a day,” defense lawyer Steven Kartagener said.
  
  Prosecutor Tatiana Martins countered by calling Dyakovskaya’s 14-year scheme “really egregious,” noting that 163,000 families are on a waiting list for the kind of low-income apartment she had in the Vladeck Houses on the Lower East Side.
  
  “Every time she sat down and took out the [qualification] form and put her name on the form, she knew she was ripping off the US government,” Martins said.
  
  Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Dyakovskaya’s bid for no jail time, saying: “What she did was reprehensible.”
  
  But Hellerstein also called her a “good person” who did “good things” for her friends and family, and noted that immigrants often fail to appreciate that “what was OK in a different society” isn’t acceptable here.
  
  In addition to the jail time, Hellerstein gave Dyakovskaya six months’ house arrest, fined her $25,000 and ordered her to pay more than $77,000 in restitution to the Housing Authority.

Source: Rental Yentl (Yiddish plea can’t save apt. cheat).