Helmsley’s Staff May Have Paid Boss’ Penance

Hotel queen Leona Helmsley was ordered to perform community service to finish her tax-evasion sentence, but her employees say she made them do the work instead, according to a newspaper report Monday.

Helmsley, 74, instructed the domestic workers to do such chores as wrapping gifts to be given to patients at an Arizona hospital and stuffing thousands of envelopes for a charity drive, the New York Daily News said, citing unidentified employees. Helmsley then allegedly misled probation officers into thinking she had done the work herself.

Helmsley was convicted in 1989 of tax evasion and sent to a prison in Danbury, Conn., on April 15, 1992. She was released in October, 1993, and spent a month in a halfway house and two months of house arrest in her Manhattan hotel. She was put on three years’ probation which included 250 hours of community service a year.

Helmsley was not in the office Monday, according to a woman answering the phone who would not give her name.