The director of an expensive Brooklyn day care stole millions in tuition payments to splurge on professional wrestling tickets, luxury vacations and food delivery services, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Federal agents arrested Murielle Misczak, the former director of a German-language immersion day care, on Wednesday morning. Ms. Misczak, a Swiss citizen, pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn federal court to charges including wire fraud and money laundering.
Her lawyer, Lowell J. Sidney, said he was “reviewing the government’s evidence.”
She is accused of stealing $2.8 million from KinderHaus Brooklyn, which serves around 100 children, most of whom have ties to Switzerland and Germany. It was established in 2009 as New York City’s first German immersion preschool, said Simona D’Souza, the founder of KinderHaus.
Using at least $350,000 of the stolen funds, Ms. Misczak took her three children to World Wrestling Entertainment events, buying tickets for deluxe packages where they met professional wrestlers at outings like “Monday Night Raw,” according to a person familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement matter.
Tuition at the day care can cost as much as $48,000 per year. Ms. Misczak, 43, was hired by the day care in 2013 and became its director in 2020. Like most of the teachers, Ms. Misczak was from a German-speaking country and was sponsored on a work visa.
“She would always say she loved KinderHaus,” Ms. D’Souza said. “I relied on her so much.”
As director, Ms. Misczak oversaw the school’s financial accounts and managed its tuition collection. But in October 2025, Ms. D’Souza noticed something strange. The day care’s tuition deposits were being routed to PayPal accounts that belonged to Ms. Misczak. Prosecutors said Ms. Misczak had made more than 450 fraudulent payments to herself over more than three years.
Ms. D’Souza fired her, and in December, the day care sued Ms. Misczak in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, accusing her of embezzling millions in school tuition to live “well beyond her means.” According to the suit, Ms. Misczak earned $40,000 per year from the school and repeatedly refused increases in her salary.
Ms. Misczak went to extreme lengths to conceal the scheme, said Andreas Koutsoudakis, a lawyer for the school, including by deleting tuition invoices and emails from PayPal about the deposits.
“This was an engineered scheme, plain and simple,” he said.
Shannon Jones, a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said in court that Ms. Misczak spent all the money she took from the scheme and had no savings. Having been fired from the day care, she had no legal status in the country and was at risk of being evicted from two apartments she rented from the school.
Ms. D’Souza, who said the day care hoped to recover the funds, said she had stood by Ms. Misczak amid previous complaints from parents. She described the scheme charged by prosecutors as the “most horrifying thing that has ever happened to anyone I’ve ever known.”
“It was a betrayal on so many levels,” Ms. D’Souza said.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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