NEW YORK (AP) – A member of Mensa, the high IQ society, was sentenced Thursday to one to three years in prison for welfare fraud.

Steven Finkelstein, 58, was accused of forcing a girlfriend to let him use her Queens apartment to receive $4,314 in housing benefits from the city’s Human Resources Administration without living there, Queens prosecutors said.

He was convicted of third-degree welfare fraud and third-degree grand larceny in February.

Joseph DeFelice said his client, who is already in prison on a parole violation related to extortion charges, planned to appeal.

“Mentally, he needs to have some psychiatric treatment,” DeFelice said. “He’s a really smart person. He’s really intelligent. … It’s just unfortunate.”

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said Finkelstein threatened to harm Estelle Margolin, her family, her neighbors and her cats if she did not sign a fraudulent lease that would qualify him for the housing benefits.

The two met in 1998 through Mensa, a group that limits its membership to those in the top two percent of the population in intelligence, Brown said. Finkelstein has previously been convicted of extorting a different woman he met at a Mensa-related event.