The youngest daughter of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X has admitted she ran up $55,000 in credit card charges using the stolen identity of a family friend.
Malikah Shabazz, 46, who lived with her mother and five sisters in Mount Vernon after her father was killed in February 1965, faces a likely sentence of probation and an order to repay the money when she is sentenced July 28 in Queens state Supreme Court.
She was released from Rikers Island Thursday where she has been held since shortly after her February arrest in North Carolina at the home she shared with her school-age daughter.
"The resolution included her getting probation and getting released from custody which was our main objective," her lawyer, Russell Rothberg, said Friday. He said Shabazz has not seen her daughter since the arrest. She was the child's sole caregiver before the arrest.
The victim in the case was the elderly widow of one of Malcolm X's bodyguards. Queens County District Attorney Richard Brown said Malikah Shabazz, "preyed upon the trusting nature of a once close family friend."
Betty Shabazz and her daughters moved to Mount Vernon from Queens following the Feb. 21, 1965, assassination of Malcolm X in a Harlem ballroom.
The widow later moved to Yonkers where she was living when her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, set fire to the apartment where she was sleeping. She died three weeks later, on June 23, 1997, from injuries she suffered in the blaze.
Malikah and her sisters have been locked in a 13-year battle in Westchester County Surrogate's Court over the estate of their dead mother, valued in 2008 at $2.8 million. Malikah Shabazz has disputed the management and accounting for the estate which is administered by her twin sister, Malaak, and her older sister, Ilyasah, who lives in New Rochelle. Malikah had a lawyer appointed by the probate court to represent her due to allegations of mental incapacity.
She was evaluated pursuant to a court order to determine her mental fitness in the criminal case, Rothberg said.
"And she was found fit to proceed," he said. "So that speaks for itself."
