NEW YORK, June 10 (UPI) -- A daughter of Malcolm X pleaded guilty to identity theft for fraudulently taking out credit cards in an older woman's name, officials in New York said.
Malikah Shabazz will be sentenced to five years conditional probation, providing she pays back the $55,000 owed to various credit card companies, the New York Daily News reported Friday.
If she fails to repay the money, Shabazz could go to prison for seven years.
Prosecutors in Queens said Shabazz ran up the debt on credit cards she took out in the name of the 70-year-old widow of one of her father's former bodyguards.
"The defendant, who preyed upon the trusting nature of a once-close family friend has admitted her guilt in committing a serious felony offense and will be ordered to make her victims financially whole," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.
Shabazz, 46, was being held in lieu of a $100,000 bond while awaiting her July 28 sentencing.
Shabazz was arrested at her home in North Carolina in February following allegations she stole the identity of Khaula Bakr, the widow of a bodyguard who was with Malcolm X when the activist-minister was assassinated at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in 1965.
Prosecutors said Bakr discovered something was amiss when Wells Fargo notified her she owed nearly $30,000 on a credit card account she never opened.
