PTA president allegedly steals $40,000 from Queens elementary school to spend on Amazon, Uber Eats, vet bills

The president of a Queens elementary school parent-teacher association (PTA) has been accused of stealing $40,000 from the school in order to spend it on Amazon, Uber Eats, and other payments. 

According to the New York Post, Athena Gonzalez was allegedly stealing the cash when other PTA members at PS 166 in Astoria launched the accusations against her last month. The secretary of the PTA group noticed that there was fraudulent bank activity and a trove of cash was missing.  

The members of the PTA were told of the missing cash in an emergency meeting on Sept 27. A copy of a check for ten grand was placed on the table by the group's secretary, looking for someone to explain. However, nobody took responsibility for writing the check. There was another check written out to Gonzalez.  

Other members of the PTA group worked together to piece together the paper trail and found that most of the charges were leading back to Gonzalez, who allegedly ran up the PTA credit card to make all sorts of purchases over the summer. She was elected to be the PTA president in June 2023.  

They tracked charges on the card to Gonzales' vet and noticed she had been posting about taking vacations as well as getting a new vehicle. The group reported the alleged cash grab to the Astoria school principal as well as the NYPD. The balance of $64,817 that the school PTA had in June 2024 was run down to $12,564, the Post reported. 

“We stand by our current PTA members and understand this horrible situation was the actions of one person,” Principal Jessica Geller told attendees at an October PTA meeting.  

The money was going to be spent on programs and activities for kids at the school such as pasta nights as well as chess, yoga, and ballroom dancing. The PTA treasurer, Claudia Henriquez, also resigned this past week. No arrests have been made, police say, but the investigation is ongoing.