Deed Theft

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Gloria's In Crown Heights Abruptly Closes Amid Wild Claims Of Fraud, Deed Theft, And "Cruelty"

For legions of hungry New Yorkers, the name Gloria conjures images of steaming goat curry, jerk chicken, and fried chickpeas dribbling out of craggy flatbread. Located on Nostrand Avenue and Sterling Place in Crown Heights, Gloria’s Caribbean Cuisine has served up authentic Trinidadian dishes from a colorful corner shop for nearly two decades. The family-run restaurant was immortalized in the finale of No Reservations, as Anthony Bourdain found himself in an impromptu reunion of The Wire while feasting on oxtail.
Then last week, Gloria’s went dark. Overnight, the bright green facade and its fading palm tree signage vanished, exposing bare plywood underneath. The news prompted a rush of mourning online — “this one hurts,” read one representative tweet — and on the street beyond the shuttered gate.
"I loved the fish and the cabbage there,” said Marie D, a 68-year-old Crown Heights resident from Haiti. “The Caribbean people, we ate a lot from them. It's good to have your food, your ethnic food."

Despite appearances, Gloria’s is not another COVID casualty. The storefront has stayed open and busy in recent months, and sent free meals to frontline workers during the darkest days of the pandemic.
The actual impetus for the restaurant’s closure stems from a byzantine legal battle, spanning nearly 20 years and more than a dozen civil court judges, attempting to get to the bottom of a seemingly straightforward question: Who owns 764 Nostrand Avenue?
In February of this year, Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bruce Balter delivered his decision. Nicole Cumberbatch, the eldest daughter of the late restaurant founder Gloria Wilson, was found to have “unlawfully occupied” the building, under a convoluted deed theft scheme cooked up in 2001. In the view of Judge Balter, Gloria’s had successfully squatted for 19 years.
He ordered Cumberbatch to pay $50 million in damages — a sum that housing attorneys say is unheard of for such cases — and vacate the premises.
“I’ve never seen a judgment so harsh,” said Oda Friedheim, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society who specializes in deed theft litigation. “Even if they don’t get the $50 million, they can destroy her entire life.”
The future recipients of those hefty damages are Marty Riskin, a 92-year-old mortgage lender, and his controversial attorney, Ravi Batra. Nel-Del Realty, a real estate corporation set up by Riskin, and placed under Batra’s name, is now the rightful owner of Gloria’s.
“We own everything that Nicole Cumberbatch has, and that includes the name Gloria’s,” Batra told Gothamist. “All I have to do is say [the word] to the sheriff and he goes and seizes anything. The can of juice in her refrigerator, we own that.”

Gloria’s hasn’t yet been liquidated, and the defendant’s attorney is holding out hope for a new settlement agreement. But the stress of the court ruling has caused “the whole family to break down,” and left them no choice but to pack up the beloved shop, according to Gloria’s grandson, Bryan “BJ” Cumberbatch Jr.
“It’s cruelty. We can’t pay the money that Batra wants, so we’d rather walk away and let him keep his building,” BJ Cumberbatch said. While helping to run Gloria’s for the last ten years, the 39-year-old has lived above the restaurant with his wife and two daughters, paying rent to his aunt, Nicole Cumberbatch, he said.
On Saturday, as BJ Cumberbatch packed his family’s possessions into a van, he assured worried customers that the restaurant would return in a new form. A second Gloria’s, run by another family member and located near Empire Boulevard, is only closed for renovations, he said. But Cumberbatch admitted he wasn’t sure what would happen if the attorney followed through on his threat to seize all of the family’s assets.
“They’re trying to say my aunt stole a building?” he asked Gothamist, incredulously. “There’s just no way.”
"Don't Worry About Anything, Ms. Cumberbatch"
Gloria Wilson arrived in Crown Heights from Trinidad amid a wave of West Indian immigration in the 1970s. She was renowned for her roti and saltfish recipes, relatives recalled, which quickly attracted attention from influential players in the neighborhood’s burgeoning Calypso and Soca music scene. In 1974, she opened the first Gloria’s on Nostrand Avenue near Empire Boulevard.
The success of that location prompted a second, since-shuttered outpost in Flatbush. The third and most successful Gloria’s — “by far,” according to BJ Cumberbatch — was established on Nostrand and Sterling in 2001, four years before Wilson’s death. The family maintains that the three-story corner building at 764 Nostrand Avenue was legally purchased for $315,000, as a gift from the eponymous matriarch to her daughter, Nicole Cumberbatch.
For Marty Riskin, news of the transaction came as a shock. Riskin, a private lender living on Long Island, had bought the building in a 1993 foreclosure sale. Fearful of the city’s rising crime rates, he hired a man named Ted Singer to help manage his Brooklyn real estate portfolio, including the 764 Nostrand address.
Riskin learned in December of 2000 that Singer had allegedly tried to sell the property in secret — a revelation communicated to Riskin by a man “whom Singer had previously pushed down a flight of stairs,” according to court papers — and set about obtaining a replacement deed (he’d lost the original). “What, how can [Singer] steal my building? Riskin said, according to his attorney. “It’s my building!"
By that point, Singer had already made two attempts, in September and October, to sell the building to Wilson and Cumberbatch. While both deals were ultimately broken up by the title company, Singer was able to dupe a foreclosure referee by forming a new LLC called 764 Nostrand Avenue Realty Corp, according to court filings. Despite the lack of a proper closing, the NYC Register recorded Cumberbatch as the property's owner in 2001.
Years later, during a tense deposition, Cumberbatch would say she had little awareness of the inner-workings of the deal. She recalled sitting in a Coney Island law office in late 2000, signing piles of documents at her mother’s instruction for what she believed to be the closure of the sale.
“I remember there was an attorney present. I'm thinking everything is okay. I'm not thinking what you're asking me now on that day because there's my mom, there's the attorney,” she testified during the 2015 deposition. “I'm a young person. I'm waiting. Yes, this house is going to be a place, a business I could run Gloria's from. That's pretty much all I was thinking.”
Cumberbatch was not closely involved, she said, in the claim that was taken out in her and Singer’s name with Fidelity Title Insurance Fraud, which later paid out the full $315,000 price tag of the building, as a result of the first squashed transaction. That claim was devised by Singer through a "fraudulent ‘cut and paste’ assignment of mortgage," according to Judge Balter.
In Cumberbatch’s telling, Singer had offered to delay the payments on her $215,000 purchase-money mortgage while he dealt with a separate legal matter. As the lawsuits between Singer and Riskin dragged on, Cumberbatch testified that she started to wonder if something was wrong. Between 2001 and 2015, she said, the family paid Singer $42,000 toward the original mortgage.
“I had your word and you had mine. I thought that was good enough,” she testified. “That's the way I was raised.”
In 2003, less than two years after Gloria’s opened, a flood of legal papers began arriving in the mail. When the new business owner asked Singer what was happening, she recalled during the deposition, he responded: “Don't worry about anything, Ms. Cumberbatch. You own the building.’"

"Unfortunately, Some People Have No Honor"
Deed theft, in its most common form, involves a con artist, hiding behind an inscrutable maze of LLCs to target a distressed homeowner, either by convincing them to sign away their rights or forging the materials outright. The victims are typically senior citizens or disabled adults, and often people of color. Brooklyn’s gentrifying neighborhoods have seen a worrisome increase in the practice in recent years.
The cases are challenging to prosecute and rarely result in criminal penalties. Since the city began keeping track of deed theft cases in 2014, there have been fewer than 50 arrests for the crime, according to NYC Sheriff Joseph Fucito. He pegged the total property values related to the arrests at $50 million.
In many ways, the tale of Gloria’s is an aberration. Deed theft cases rarely involve commercial storefronts and almost never result in high-value damage awards, according to Friedheim, the housing attorney. She noted that the extraordinary $50 million judgment was not aimed at a predatory deed thief hiding behind a shady corporation, but a Black woman business owner operating in plain sight.
In an interview, Robert Rambadadt, the attorney who’s represented Cumberbatch since 2017, maintained that his client was an unwitting actor made to look complicit in Singer’s scam. He said he was “shocked” by the damages. “They put everything on her. She was literally the last person standing.”
Earlier this year, a settlement was reached by the two parties for $4.75 million to be paid over 12 years, including proceeds from the sale of a Brownsville property owned by Cumberbatch. That deal was snapped back last month, after Cumberbatch was found to have attempted to transfer the Brownsville deed to her sister, Kim Wilson. "That was the only thing she had left," said BJ Cumberbatch. "She was scared and trying to safeguard it."
An order from Judge Balter last month named BJ Cumberbatch, Kim Wilson, and Nicole’s husband, Wayne Cox, as aiding and abetting in her attempt to transfer the title. The current judgement, including interest, is now $50,226,480.
Cumberbatch was hospitalized this month, a result of depression stemming from the case, according to family members and her attorney. Neither she nor Riskin spoke to Gothamist for this story.
In an interview, Batra said he was "running out of compassion" for Cumberbatch and her family. “It’s a fraud onion, one layer of fraud after another,” the attorney said. “Unfortunately some people have no honor.”
Batra himself has been the subject of ethics inquiries. In 2003, the Times published an investigation into the attorney’s alleged tendency to “blur, or even ignore, the boundaries between the bench and the bar” by allegedly cozying up to judges, some of whom he helped select.
On two occasions, the Times reported, Batra was awarded fees that state monitors found unusually high. In one of those instances, he personally received a $225,000 settlement after falling from a swivel chair (he’d sued the Brooklyn chair company for $80 million). Eight lawyers involved in that case who spoke to the Times said the Manhattan Supreme Court judge who presided over that suit never disclosed that she also provided Batra with valuable appointments. (Gothamist found no evidence to suggest any prior relationship between Batra and Judge Balter.)
The lawsuits between Riskin and Singer — involving the Gloria’s property along with other financial matters — stretched across multiple courts for decades. Batra described Singer as a “litigation terrorist,” who attempted to run out the clock through dozens of frivolous lawsuits. After Singer died in 2019, Batra and Riskin ultimately settled with his family’s estate for just $1. With that matter behind them, the mortgage lender and his attorney were free to focus on Cumberbatch.
"She had 20 years of due process. Finally the court system vomited," Batra told Gothamist. “The law may grind slowly, but it grinds finely.”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Former Brooklyn lawyer accused of $8M deed theft scheme
Sanford Solny accused of reaping $600K in rent on unlawfully obtained homes

A former Brooklyn attorney has been indicted for carrying out a nearly $8 million deed theft scheme, a practice that is not uncommon in areas with high foreclosure rates.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez accused Sanford Solny of stealing deeds to eight properties in foreclosure by tricking victims into handing over their homes. He allegedly collected over $600,000 in rent from the properties, which are located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Cypress Hills, Flatbush and Ocean Hill. The homes were valued at $7.8 million.
Solny was served a 63-count indictment for grand larceny, scheme to defraud and possession of stolen property.
“Brooklyn’s valuable real estate market continues to be an attractive target for fraudsters willing to deceive homeowners,” said Gonzalez. “These victims, who trusted the defendant to help them avoid foreclosure, instead allegedly had their homes stolen by him and were left facing financial ruin.”

The alleged deed thief, who lost his license to practice law in 2012, just before the alleged scheme began, received homeowners desperate to avoid foreclosure in his Borough Park office. Solny convinced them he would sell the properties to a third party in order to save their homes from foreclosure, and paid the alleged victims between $1,000 and $18,000 to take control of their properties.

According to Gonzalez, the homeowners believed that after Solny sold their properties to a third party, the lender would forgive the loan amount. Instead, Gonzalez alleges that Solny never made any effort to sell the properties.
In some cases, the alleged victims would sign the deeds over to Solny directly, believing that doing so was necessary to carry out the short sale. In other cases, Solny would instruct the homeowners to sign paperwork they thought was related to the transaction, but instead ceded ownership of their homes. After the transaction was completed, he convinced the homeowners to vacate the property.

Solny’s alleged scheme is not an isolated occurrence, especially in minority communities, where foreclosure rates are elevated.
When a foreclosure filing is made public, which happens long before the lender takes back the keys to the property, homeowners are often met with a barrage of solicitations from lawyers, real estate brokers and house flippers with cash offers. The onslaught is such that foreclosure prevention specialists often struggle to distinguish themselves and reach the homeowner.

The pressure to sell rather than refinance or seek assistance is particularly severe in neighborhoods like East New York and Cypress Hills, where foreclosure rates are higher than the rest of the city. In November, the New York Department of State declared parts of those neighborhoods a “cease and desist zone,” a move that the Long Island Board of Realtors opposed.

Homeowners in parts of East New York and Cypress Hills can now add their names to a published list, which forbids real estate brokers from contacting those facing foreclosure without their permission. The restrictions will be in place until 2025.
Street, New York, NY 10001 Phone: 212-260-1332

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
He Runs a New York Real Estate Empire. Did He Steal It?
Homeowners across the city say they were swindled out of their properties. But courts have been slow to act.
Over the past dozen years, Sanford Solny has built a New York real estate empire, snatching up small residential buildings across the city that churn out hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent.
His portfolio would be enviable but for one thing — much of it, prosecutors and homeowners contend, was stolen. In criminal charges and lawsuits, they have accused him of fraud: offering to help homeowners facing foreclosure by arranging to pay off their mortgages, while actually tricking them into signing over their buildings at bargain-basement prices. In nearly every case, the mortgage was never paid, leaving the homeowner with no property but a pile of debt.
The practice is known as deed theft, and as city and state officials promised to crack down on it, they homed in on Mr. Solny. The Brooklyn district attorney, whose office has charged him with taking the homes of seven families, called his behavior “despicable.” In Queens, prosecutors accused Mr. Solny and his associates of cheating 10 people out of their properties. The court appointed a monitor to scrutinize his transactions.

But an examination by The New York Times has found that not only is Mr. Solny still profiting from buildings under dispute, city agencies are contributing to his earnings by subsidizing the rent at some of his properties.

His case exemplifies the slow and stumbling fight against deed theft, which often targets immigrants and Black and Latino homeowners. Despite repeated pledges from the New York State attorney general and legislature to curtail the fraud, only a small fraction of thousands of complaints are ever prosecuted. Homeowners, stripped of their most significant asset, are left to engage in a long and expensive fight to try to reclaim their properties in civil court.
A close review of Mr. Solny’s holdings and transactions — drawing on housing court cases, lawsuits, city property records and interviews — reveals a long record of questionable dealings and a largely ineffective government response. Over more than a decade, Mr. Solny and companies linked to him took ownership of at least 140 properties, The Times found. The former owners of 40 of those buildings — which include a coveted brownstone in gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a three-story apartment building near Rockaway Beach and a suburban Craftsman-style home with a lawn in Rosedale, Queens — have claimed they were victims of deed theft, civil and criminal court records show.
Even while Mr. Solny was under the eye of the monitor, a company controlled by him paid a Brooklyn woman $5,000 for a home worth about 100 times that much and left her family with the debt, according to the woman and city property records.

Through a web of shell companies, Mr. Solny still owns 19 homes whose owners he has been accused of defrauding, and he collects rent from tenants he installed in many of them, according to court filings, city records and interviews. As criminal charges against Mr. Solny have piled up, city agencies have paid the rent of tenants at some of those properties through affordable-housing vouchers, The Times found.

“How does the system work for him and not for us?” said Janet Bruce, a retired home health aide from Guyana who said in court filings that Mr. Solny walked into her home in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in 2014 with a stack of paper and a promise to rescue her and her husband from foreclosure. He gave the couple $14,000 but never paid off their mortgage, she said.

He walked out as the owner of a building now worth about $900,000, said Ms. Bruce, 69, who has sued Mr. Solny. The transaction is also part of the criminal case in Brooklyn.

The former home of Janet Bruce, who has accused Mr. Solny of stealing the property. A company linked to Mr. Solny is renting the house, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, to tenants including a mother and eight children.

From July 2014 through February of this year, there were more than 3,350 complaints of deed theft in New York City, almost half of which were in Brooklyn, according to the city Department of Finance. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office brought charges in 27 cases of deed theft since 2014, according to a Times review.

“It just makes you wonder how seriously we, as a society, and our criminal justice system, take white-collar crime that actually victimizes people,” said Oda Friedheim, a supervising lawyer at the Legal Aid Society who deals with property fraud.
A lawyer for Mr. Solny declined to answer specific questions from The Times, citing the open criminal case in Brooklyn.
“The fact that these clients would lose their homes had been a foregone conclusion long before they ever met Mr. Solny,” the lawyer, Michael Farkas, said in a statement. “When they sought his assistance with managing that unfortunate and complex reality, these clients executed documents that clearly conveyed their properties to Mr. Solny.”

Deed fraud complaints in New York City have fallen from a peak of 665 in 2015 to 154 last year. But those numbers mask what could be a looming surge now that protections against foreclosure that were put in place during the pandemic have expired.

“You have a very high number of homeowners that are in distress, and real estate in New York has never been more valuable,” said Ivy Perez, the senior policy and research manager for the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, an affordable-housing nonprofit. “That is a potent combination for scammers.”

‘We Lost Everything’​

Ms. Bruce, 69, in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment in a building for low-income seniors. A business tied to Mr. Solny took ownership of her two-story home in 2014.

Deed theft takes different forms, but Mr. Solny is accused of one of the most common.
The fraud preys on people who are in danger of losing their homes, information that is easily obtainable in real estate databases. Some buyers also recruit local residents to find people they know who are in financial trouble.

Homeowners are told they qualify for a short sale — a deal in which the lender settles for less than the amount owed on the mortgage. The owners, already resigned to losing their properties to foreclosure and confused by a mountain of paperwork, believe the deal will at least relieve them of their debt and give them a small amount of cash.
In reality, the documents they sign transfer ownership of the building while still leaving the homeowners responsible for the debt. The person committing the fraud brings in tenants and collects rent, sometimes for years, until banks or other lenders finally foreclose on the property.
Ms. Bruce fell behind on her mortgage payments in 2013, after her husband, James, a plan examiner for the Department of Buildings, had a stroke.

A friend from church referred Ms. Bruce to Mr. Solny, who said he could help arrange a short sale. Mr. Solny told her she would lose the house but the mortgage would be paid, and he would take care of everything as her lawyer, she said in her lawsuit.

Mr. Solny and his associates arrived late, Ms. Bruce said, and then rushed her and her husband to sign documents in separate rooms. He paid them each $7,000, according to the complaint.
No short-sale attempt was made, she said, but a deed transferring the property to East 29th Street Realty Inc. was recorded with the city, records show. Mr. Solny signed as the buyer, and his daughter, Shandelle Solny, signed as a witness. For years, because of assurances from Mr. Solny, Ms. Bruce did not realize that the growing debt would remain in her name, she said. She owes roughly $350,000 — a debt she could pay, with money to spare, if she were able to sell or refinance the home.

Photographs are among the few objects that connect Ms. Bruce to her former home, shown here in undated pictures.

Mr. Solny installed tenants shortly after the couple moved out and has collected more than $200,000 from the building, according to Bill Lienhard, a lawyer for Ms. Bruce. Two current tenants confirmed to The Times that they paid rent to a company controlled by Mr. Solny.

“He collects rent until the foreclosure is done, and then he’s out — what does he care?” said Toby Cohen, another lawyer who has represented several people suing Mr. Solny.
Prosecutors say they are hamstrung by the law: They must show there was criminal intent in cases that are not as slam-dunk as those they prefer to bring to court. Years can go by before a homeowner realizes what happened, and the transactions are complicated. What one person claims as fraud can be defended as just a lopsided business deal.

“Deed theft is notoriously difficult to investigate and prosecute,” said Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney. The sentiment was echoed by Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney.

Civil lawsuits are usually the only way a homeowner can try to reclaim a title, and victims often cannot afford a lawyer. The plaintiffs rarely win — properties once owned by several of Mr. Cohen’s clients were sold at foreclosure auctions to other parties before the cases could be settled.

Litigation is complicated by a web of shell companies controlled by Mr. Solny and members of his family. Of the 140 transactions The Times linked to Mr. Solny, none was personally deeded to him. Instead, he signed as an officer of a corporate entity that assumed ownership.
“We lost everything,” Ms. Bruce said, recalling a period when she slept on friends’ couches and left New York for cheaper housing in Philadelphia. Her husband died in 2020. “Do you know how hard it is to be picking up the pieces when you’re in your senior years?”

No Heat or Hot Water​

Mr. Solny’s office in Borough Park, Brooklyn, where several homeowners said they unwittingly signed paperwork that transferred their property to shell companies he controlled.

Homeowners are not the only ones affected. Tenants and city agencies have complained of serious safety and health hazards at buildings owned by companies linked to Mr. Solny.

Of the 19 disputed properties those companies still owned as of June, 15 had open housing violations, including for heat and hot-water failures, unsafe wiring and pest infestations.

“They’re not doing nothing — never have heating, never fix nothing,” said Sandy Triunfel, a home attendant who in 2017 stopped paying rent on her apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, according to court records, because she said she did not receive hot water or gas for months.

The owner, Blue Realty & Services Group, a company tied to Mr. Solny, evicted her the next year. The previous homeowner had claimed in civil court that the company had tricked him into signing over the deed to the home.
At Ms. Bruce’s former home, city inspectors found almost four dozen lead paint violations in February 2019, when a mother and her eight children were living there. After the tenants applied for emergency rental aid, the city paid roughly $21,000 in back rent to Mr. Solny’s company. Two current tenants said the city was still paying some of their rent through subsidies.

It was one of three disputed properties where The Times found the city had covered the rent for Mr. Solny’s tenants. The New York City Housing Authority, which paid subsidies at one of the properties, said it had since added Mr. Solny’s company to a list of banned landlords.
Neha Sharma, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Social Services, which administers the rent assistance program at the other two buildings, said the agency’s priority was to preserve housing stability for tenants.

A Buying Spree​

Tenants and homeowners described Mr. Solny, 65, as cordial, with a soft voice and grandfatherly mien.

Mr. Solny, 65, who is known as Sandy, has been on the city’s radar for years.
In 2012, he was suspended from practicing law for pilfering $600,000 from his dying uncle, according to a disciplinary board decision. He paid back the money but remains suspended.

The next year, Mr. Solny and his daughter went on a buying spree: at least 50 houses in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, many of which were in or approaching foreclosure. On a single day in March 2013, they signed the deeds to three homes in East New York, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Brooklyn, according to city records.

Tenants and homeowners described him as cordial, with a soft voice and grandfatherly mien.
“He’s very slick,” said Richard Severe, who sued a company controlled by Mr. Solny in 2015 for claiming the title to his two-family home in East New York. The case is open.
In 2016, Mr. Solny and his associates were charged in Queens with crimes related to the theft of 10 homes. He pleaded guilty two years later to a lesser charge of criminal possession of stolen property and was sentenced to up to five years of probation.
Mr. Solny paid a fine and returned rent he had collected, and five deeds were voided as a result of the deal. His daughter, Shandelle, 31, was charged with tax fraud and paid restitution in a plea deal. Ms. Solny declined to comment beyond the statement issued by her father’s lawyer.

In 2020, Brooklyn prosecutors charged Mr. Solny with crimes connected to the theft of eight properties. Following the indictment, Mr. Solny’s probation officer recommended that he be sentenced to prison for violating the terms of his plea deal in Queens. A verdict has not yet been reached in the Brooklyn case.
The Queens deal did not bar Mr. Solny from buying more real estate, but the court appointed a monitor in 2018 to review his business deals going forward and flag any suspicious transactions.
In a review of property records, The Times found a questionable transaction conducted after Mr. Solny’s plea in Queens.

Elizabeth Lewis, 77, a retired bank worker, told The Times that in late 2019, Mr. Solny offered to arrange a short sale on a Brooklyn property, a two-bedroom brick house in East Flatbush belonging to Ms. Lewis’s sister, who had a reverse mortgage and other debt.

Ms. Lewis said she signed paperwork on behalf of her sister, who died in 2020, to initiate a sale. The deed recorded the sale at $35,000, but Ms. Lewis said she was paid $5,000 with the promise of more when the house was sold.
She signed over the deed to a company controlled by Mr. Solny, but the debt was not paid, according to property records and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which holds the loan.
Comparable sales show the house is probably worth more than $500,000, but Ms. Lewis can no longer sell it because Mr. Solny’s company is listed with the city as the owner.
She has not heard from Mr. Solny in almost two years, she said.
Brian Sanvidge, who has overseen the review of Mr. Solny’s transactions at Anchin, the monitoring firm, said that he had looked at more than 240 properties connected to Mr. Solny and had not caught the East Flatbush sale. He called it “concerning” and said he would report it to the Queens district attorney.

Little Relief​

On a June visit to Ms. Bruce’s former home, there were signs of water damage, holes in the ceilings and chipping paint. Mr. Solny and his companies have dozens of open housing violations at properties they own.

Public efforts have been made to counter property fraud, but critics say the measures fall short.
The state attorney general’s office announced a campaign to fight deed theft in 2020, funding free legal services and mortgage assistance in neighborhoods vulnerable to fraud. But relief for those who have already lost their homes can be difficult to get: The office is currently prosecuting just three deed theft cases.

A state law passed in 2019 included a rule that allows prosecutors to file a motion to void a fraudulent property transfer in connection with a guilty plea or verdict.

But the rule is narrowly defined, limiting its use, and the process can still take years, said Rachel Geballe, a deputy director at Brooklyn Legal Services. Neither Queens nor Brooklyn prosecutors have used the mechanism, although the offices said they had used other means to void fraudulent deeds.
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For Ms. Bruce, eight years have passed since she signed her home over to Mr. Solny’s company. The Brooklyn criminal case has been adjourned 13 times since late 2020. Mr. Farkas said in court in June that his client was considering a plea deal.
“I’m hoping some sort of justice will come from this,” Ms. Bruce said. “I say, ‘Lord, when is this going to be over?’”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Crown Heights family that twice defied eviction lays out deed-theft claims​

Complaint ties real estate operators to previous accounts of stolen homes​


Things looked bleak in May for a Crown Heights family that reclaimed its home after being evicted in an alleged deed-theft scheme.
The Robinsons were facing ejection for the second time in three months, and their attorney had dropped their deed-theft lawsuit after new evidence suggested the matriarch’s grandson had pocketed money in a deal for the property, 964 Park Place.
Soon after, a housing court judge agreed to hear the new owner’s arguments on whether to reinstate an eviction.
But on the last day of May, the judge put the Robinsons’ case on hold until the state ruled on their application for rent relief, which they filed despite claiming ownership of the stately Brooklyn brownstone.
Now, the family is using that temporary immunity to re-up claims that a ring of real estate operators stole 98-year-old Ida Robinson’s home of 70 years.
Their complaint filed this month offers new details about the allegation Robinson and her offspring have made for months: that the transfer of their house to real estate investors was fraudulent.
Robinson believed she was signing for an $800,000, cash-out refinancing of her home’s $446,000 mortgage that would free up $330,000, according to the suit.
But the suit claims that on June 18, 2015, Hezi Torati and Yariv Katz, who claimed to be the family’s attorney, coerced Robinson into signing “fictitious property transfer documents.”
The suit alleges that no notary witnessed the signing and the deed that transferred ownership to Torati’s 964 Park Place LLC only bears notary Mordche Fuchs’ stamp, not his signature.
The family’s filing makes two significant acknowledgments: that Robinson’s grandson Ali Torain accepted $323,476 from the cash-out refinancing and that $451,700 went to pay off their outstanding mortgage. Those figures match the amounts Torati’s LLC submitted as evidence against Torain.
The Robinsons’ filing contends that Torati and Katz sent Torain funds to dissuade him from unwinding the deal.
Robinson, under the guardianship of her daughter Helen Robinson, is suing Torati, Katz, Fuchs and the property’s current owner Menachem Gurevitch to void the deed, cancel the subsequent transfers and return ownership to the Robinsons.
This month’s filing is the fifth in a long legal battle between the family and the real estate operators involved in 964 Park Place’s disputed sale.

After the June 2015 meeting, the complaint states, the Robinsons tried to unwind the deal when the refinancing funds didn’t immediately come through. Soon after, those involved in the transaction connected Torain with attorney Andre Soleil to help cancel the deal.
But the complaint alleges that Soleil instead represented Ida Robinson without her consent in multiple suits brought by Torati’s LLC and the property’s current owner, Gurevitch.
Soleil was later disbarred for deed theft. Other defendants named in the Robinsons’ filing share his connection to property theft schemes.
Katz, for example, was charged in March 2017 with defrauding senior citizens out of their homes. And the Brooklyn district attorney’s office indicted Torati in 2011 for doing business through a “phony financial services company.” The complaint alleges Torati has a record of “engaging in mortgage loan modification and refinancing scams.”
A spokesperson for Torati said, “There are no merits to these allegations and it will be demonstrated once again in court.” The other parties named did not respond to requests for comment.
The debt that led to the saga stemmed from a 7 percent, $455,000 mortgage the elder Robinson got from a subprime lender in January 2007. Robinson and her late husband bought 964 Park Place in 1968 after the family had lived there for 17 years. She paid off their original $17,000 mortgage in 1991.
The Robinsons’ attorney did not return a request for comment. The Crown Heights Tenant Union, which has assisted the family, declined to comment.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Attorney General James Announces Arrests in New York City Deed Theft Ring
Five Individuals Stole Homes Owned by Elderly and Vulnerable Residents in Southeast Queens
NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced the indictment of five members of a deed theft ring for allegedly stealing three homes worth more than $1 million in total from elderly, vulnerable homeowners in the Queens neighborhoods of Jamaica and St. Albans. The defendants impersonated the real homeowners of these properties by using forged driver's licenses and social security cards. They then used that forged information at contract signings and closings on the properties and forged the real owners’ signatures on deeds and real estate contracts.
“No one should face the nightmare of having their home stolen from them without any warning, knowledge, or reason,” said Attorney General James. “Deed theft is a merciless crime that targets seniors, and often people of color, who are asset rich but cash poor, and reliant on their homes as a stabilizing force for their families and loved ones. My office will continue our work to combat deed theft until we can ensure no other New Yorker is forced to endure this heartbreaking, life-altering loss.”
“I thank Attorney General Letitia James as well as our agency and law enforcement partners for their diligent efforts on behalf of New Yorkers,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz. “Deed fraud is an increasingly pervasive crime that robs homeowners of their single most valuable asset. Though it is a growing challenge throughout Queens County, those who choose to victimize others for their own financial gain will be held to account in this borough.”
“Deed Fraud continues to be a priority of our office that victimizes the most vulnerable homeowners of New York City,” said New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda. “Perpetrators prey upon the elderly, the financially disadvantaged, and the medically infirmed through deception and a variety of nefarious schemes. The Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation will continue to coordinate our effort to protect homeowners and investigate these horrific thefts along with all of our law enforcement partners in the city. We commend the actions of the New York Attorney General’s Office Real Estate Enforcement Unit for their investigation which resulted in today’s arrests and thank them for their continued efforts in this area.”
The five individuals indicted are:
  • Marcus Wilcher, 47
  • Stacie Saunders, 51
  • Anyekache Hercules, 47
  • Jerry Currin, 66
  • Dean Lloyd, 61
Beginning in September 2019, Wilcher located homes in Jamaica and St. Albans, Queens in poor or run-down condition with absentee owners. Saunders then marketed the homes to investors at prices significantly below market rate for quick sales. After an investor expressed interest in purchasing a home, Wilcher would secure personal information about the real owners, including social security numbers and birth dates, to create falsified drivers’ licenses, social security cards, and bank cards. Wilcher and Saunders then found people to impersonate the true owners of the properties at contract signings and closings.
Hercules created certain forged legal documents used in the theft of the homes. As she was disbarred and could not practice law in New York, Hercules fraudulently used a practicing attorney’s email and name on legal correspondence. Lloyd or one of three other individuals that have yet to be apprehended would appear at the closings with forged deeds and contracts. Currin appeared at the closing on his family home with an individual who pretended to be his sister, the executor of the family estate. This person has not yet been apprehended. Currin also submitted a false affidavit in support of a second estate sale for a different stolen property, written as a long-time family friend.
After the sales were finalized, the defendants opened bank accounts in the names of the homes’ real owners using the impostor sellers’ forged drivers’ licenses and social security cards. He and his co-conspirators then used these bank accounts and other entities and LLCs they controlled to funnel more than $1 million in proceeds to themselves.
The stolen properties are:
  • 161-14 121 Avenue, Queens, New York
  • 112-39 176 Street, Queens, New York
  • 168-11 119 Avenue, Queens, New York
Saunders, Hercules, and Currin were arraigned yesterday before Supreme Court Judge Evelyn Braun in Queens County. Lloyd was arrested in Delaware County, Pennsylvania and is pending extradition to New York. The defendants, as detailed in the indictment, have been charged with the following crimes: Money Laundering in the Second Degree, a class C felony; Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, a class C felony; Attempted Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, a class D felony; Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony; Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, a class E felony; Practice of Law by an Attorney Who Has Been Disbarred, Suspended or Convicted of a Felony, a class E felony; Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree, a class E felony; Forgery in the Second Degree, a class E felony; Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree, a class E felony; and Criminal Impersonation in the Second Degree, a class A misdemeanor. The maximum sentence on the top count is 15 years.
The charges are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
While four members of the deed theft ring have been apprehended, another four remain at large: Wilcher and three individuals that have yet to be identified. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is now seeking the public’s help in bringing them to justice.
Deed Theft
The above three individuals impersonated homeowners and have yet to be found.
Images have been taken from falsified identification cards.

The OAG encourages anyone familiar with one or more of the co-conspirators at-large to contact OAG’s Public Integrity Bureau confidentially by calling (212) 416-8090 or emailing public.integrity@ag.ny.gov.
The OAG thanks the New York Department of State for the criminal referral and its assistance with this investigation and prosecution. The OAG also thanks the New York City Department of Finance for its help. The OAG also thanks the Yeadon Pennsylvania Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration, and the New York City Police Department.
“Deed theft has been a prevalent issue in South East Queens for years. It is an egregious act to impersonate and steal someone's livelihood and has been an issue that has caused an incredible amount of stress and insecurity for residents,” said New York City Council Member Nantasha Williams. “I want to thank Attorney General Letitia James for her work in investigating and apprehending this deed theft ring and look forward to our continued partnership in combating this concern.”
“Deed theft is a shocking and highly lucrative criminal scheme that preys on some of New York’s most vulnerable communities,” said K. Scott Kohanowski, Director of Homeowner Stability Project, City Bar Justice Center. “It can have a devastating effect on New Yorkers resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, often of inter-generational family wealth in a way that worsens the racial wealth gap. We applaud the Attorney General’s efforts to hold perpetrators of these crimes accountable and put their like-minded copycats on notice.”
The case was investigated by Detective Steven Pratt under the direction of Supervising Detective Anna Ospanova and Assistant Chief Samuel Scotellaro, all under the supervision of Acting Chief Edward Carrasco. The Investigations Bureau is led by Chief Oliver Pu-Folkes. The audit function was undertaken by Senior Auditor Investigator Danielle Dudley under the supervision of Deputy Chief Auditor Sandy Bizzarro. The audit team is led by Chief Auditor Kristen Fabbri.
Assistant Attorneys General Nicholas Kyriacou and Aida Vernon are handling the prosecution in this matter under the supervision of the Public Integrity Bureau Chief Gerard Murphy and Deputy Chief Kiran Heer, with assistance from Legal Support Analyst Grace Koh and Legal Assistant Glenis Biscette. Both the Investigations Bureau and the Public Integrity Bureau are part of the Division for Criminal Justice. The Division for Criminal Justice is led by Chief Deputy Attorney General José Maldonado and overseen by First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy.

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

NYC speculator ring accused of fraud in $10M flip business​

Elliot and Joseph Ambalo use LLCs unsuspecting homeowners in gentrifying areas

Two brothers and their business partner are accused of buying up properties from underneath unsuspecting homeowners and flipping them for profits with maneuvers that are morally dubious at best and unlawful at worst.
Elliott and Joseph Ambalo, along with business partner Etai Vardim, appear to be targeting homeowners in Black and Latino neighborhoods with their speculation plans, some of which lead to possible fraud, The City reported.

The business strategy sees the ring find heirs of property owners who died without a will, many of whom are so far removed that they don’t necessarily realize a property’s worth or value to the person living there. The Ambalos convince the heirs to sell their fractional ownership, gaining enough control to become primary owner and evict the tenant, only to then flip the home for big profits.
To do this, the ring is uses generically named limited liability companies, further obscuring their activities. This has allowed them to grab 119 properties across New York City, according to The City. About a third have been subject to eviction or removal notices, though the speculators sometimes failed to register ownership with the city prior to beginning eviction proceedings.

Overall, the ring has ponied up at least $4.8 million to buy fractional ownership of city properties. They’ve managed to flip those shares to new owners for a $9.5 million profit, not including other expenses.
“The purchase of fractional shares of properties is a long-standing, lawful business practice in the real estate industry,” Vardi told The City in an email, claiming the partners operate lawfully and ethically.

That’s debatable. On the website for their business, Premier Property GRP, the brothers claimed to be licensed brokers, a claim they later acknowledged in dispositions was false before it was ultimately removed from the site.

They’ve also faced allegations of fraud or forgery from multiple heirs and notaries public. An assistant attorney general from Letitia James’ office has taken an interest in the accusations, which have also drawn the attention of the Queens County Public Administrator.

“Sadly many individuals are not prepared and the beneficiaries are not educated on the topic,” Compass broker Heather Domi told the outlet. “There should be education and awareness around these assets to protect these vulnerable individuals.”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Fraudster indicted for stealing Harlem brownstones
Long Island man forged documents, used shell companies to hide thefts: AG

A Long Island man with a decades-long history of crimes has been indicted a second time for stealing two brownstones in Harlem.
New York Attorney General Lettiia James indicted Joseph Makhani, 60, of Kings Point, Long Island, for the thefts of 107 West 118th Street and 135 West 131st Street.

Makhani forged documents and used shell companies to hide the crimes, state officials alleged.
The Long Island man was arraigned Monday in Manhattan and pleaded not guilty to two counts of criminal possession of stolen property and one count of scheme to defraud.
“This crime harms entire communities, especially those facing population displacement and gentrification,” said James in a statement.
Makhani falsely reported that he paid $975,000 for the West 118th Street property and received a $650,000 construction loan for renovations. He refinanced, receiving a $1.2 million mortgage on the property, the state said.
The previous resident ended up in a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, between 2016 and 2023, Makhani rented out four units for between $3,000 and $3,400 per month after he received approval from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development to convert the home into market-rate rentals.
The last true deed recorded on the 131st Street property was from 1975, state officials said, in the name of an elderly owner who died soon after. When a beneficiary who took over management passed away in 2010, Makhani took advantage.
In 2012, Makhani told a building tenant that he had purchased the brownstone, and secured the tenant’s signature by pretending to offer him a job. The forged signature was used to file a new deed showing the tenant as the owner of the building. The deed was then transferred to One 35 West Corp., a company Makhani controlled.

The Long Island man filed another deed to show the initial owner of the property had transferred the building to him, even using a Social Security number from someone born in 1902.
Makhani was indicted by James in 2012 on seven counts including criminal possession of stolen property and residential mortgage fraud. He was sued by HPD in 2013, which fined him $1 million for failing to maintain the brownstone. Makhani later abandoned the property, which was then foreclosed on.
Makhani has a rap sheet of real estate crimes dating back to the 1990s. He spent three months in prison after pleading guilty in 1998 to bid-rigging foreclosed properties in Queens and submitting a false tax return, the New York Post reported, and in 2008, three companies he allegedly owned pleaded guilty to forging signatures on deeds filed through the city’s Department of Finance.
If convicted, Makhani faces up to 25 years in state prison, James said.
Deed theft is difficult to prove when victims are tricked into signing legal documents. James has proposed making prosecution of it easier by passing a law making deed theft a crime.
A representative for Makhani could not be reached for comment.
 

David Goldsmith

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Staff member

Brooklyn man admits to deed and mortgage fraud​

Crook stole titles, mortgage loans in Park Slope, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy

A Clinton Hill man pleaded guilty to a deed fraud scheme in which he bagged $775,000, the Brooklyn district attorney said Wednesday.
Derrick Johnson, a.k.a. Jay Rendell, copped to grand larceny stemming from an indictment for a deed fraud scheme involving properties in Park Slope, Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“This defendant filed phony deeds and mortgage documents against multiple properties in a brazen real estate scheme that defrauded homeowners and lenders,” D.A. Eric Gonzalez said in a press release.
The D.A. said the plea “sends a strong message to any would-be fraudsters that we will vigorously pursue justice on behalf of fraud victims.”

But deed theft has been notoriously hard to prosecute because the criminals typically re-sell properties immediately to third and fourth buyers, making it hard for authorities to legally reverse the transactions without proving that all the parties were complicit.
Johnson did not do that. Instead, he borrowed money against the properties, in two cases by fraudulently transferring their titles to entities he controlled, the prosecutor said.
Gonzalez said the investigation found that on Nov. 25, 2020, Johnson fraudulently obtained a mortgage on an apartment building at 349 17th Street in Park Slope by using fake documents to induce a commercial lender to issue him a mortgage of $337,825, which he stole.

Over two weeks in June 2021, acting with an indicted alleged accomplice, Johnson fraudulently transferred title to 1517 Broadway in Bushwick to a shell corporation and induced a different commercial lender to issue them a mortgage of $107,607, the D.A. said.

According to the release, they divided the proceeds, with Johnson taking $50,000 and the rest going to his partner.
The following month, authorities said, Johnson fraudulently transferred title to an apartment building at 323 Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant to a shell corporation that he controlled and induced a third commercial lender to issue a mortgage of $329,332, which Johnson pocketed.
Deed fraud complaints are trending downward citywide, particularly in Brooklyn, which Gonzalez credited to a special effort by his office. Deed fraud complaints in Brooklyn fell from 318 in 2015 to 72 in 2021 to 31 last year. Only four were recorded in the first half of this year.
Deed thefts often require a closing, which typically involves skilled operators and unwitting real estate professionals, according to the press release. It was not clear from the release if authorities are training real estate pros and lenders to recognize fraudulent transactions.

 

David Goldsmith

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Staff member
Hochul signs deed theft legislation
Law creates red flags for scams; “sham” LLCs might be next

Authorities now have more tools to halt bogus property transfers and create “legal red flags” to warn lenders and prospective buyers about stolen homes.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill today allowing prosecutors to intervene in suspected deed thefts. Such schemes can involve a deed being forged and filed with the state, or a homeowner unwittingly signing over property to someone pretending to help the homeowner avoid foreclosure.

The New York City Sheriff’s Office had received nearly 3,500 complaints of deed theft over the past 10 years.
“The idea that someone can steal your wealth at the stroke of a pen,” Hochul said during a press conference ahead of signing the bill. “It is unconscionable, and we will no longer stand for it.”

Under the new law, the state attorney general and local district attorneys can move to suspend eviction, foreclosure and similar proceedings if theft allegations are being investigated or the government has filed a criminal or civil complaint.
Authorities can also file a notice of pendency — basically an official red flag — to warn lenders and prospective buyers that ownership of the property is in dispute.
Previously, if a scammer sold a stolen property to a third party, the buyer was protected as a “good faith purchaser,” even if the buyer were in on the scam, as is often the case. The new law voids these protections, stipulating that the new buyer needs to watch out for red flags.

The measure also states that the buyer should know the seller’s fraudulent intent in cases where the property’s previous mortgage is not paid off or transferred. In such cases, the new buyer is not entitled to hold onto the stolen property, because the outstanding mortgage counts as ample warning.

The law also gives the New York attorney general authority to void fraudulent deeds. Attorney General Letitia James, who initiated the legislation, indicted five members of a deed theft ring in late 2022, but the crime has been notoriously difficult to prosecute.
“Deed theft robs New Yorkers, especially older adults and people of color of their life-long investment, of building wealth in their homes,” James said. “The perpetrators of deed theft force their victims to endure humiliating and terrifying situations, and often the very real threat of eviction from their family home.

Lawmakers this year considered a separate bill that would make deed theft a standalone crime in New York. Sen. Brian Kavanagh, a sponsor, noted today that legislators are working with James to strengthen criminal charges against deed thieves.
The governor noted that such schemes are made possible by “sham LLCs.” When asked if Hochul’s comment signaled she would sign the LLC Transparency Act, a pending bill to create a public database naming owners of such entities, a spokesperson for the governor only said she is considering the measure.

 
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