An obvious swindle centering on possession of a house in Harlem has resulted in costs towards three individuals who allegedly stole a property deed from a person who owned the home for practically 40 years.
Final week, Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg introduced indictments in a deed theft and mortgage fraud case that revolved round a Harlem brownstone. The defendants — Angela Jazmin Ramos Malpica, 35; Yuan Kuei Li, 41; and Abdur Rahman, 34 — are accused of taking possession of a property they didn’t personal. They allegedly focused the household of Okryun Marrero, who had bought the multifamily dwelling at 267 West 131st Avenue in 1986.
Marrero died in 2018 and left her dwelling to her husband, kids, and grandchildren. However Angela Ramos got here ahead to assert that she was Marrero’s inheritor. She signed a deed to assert possession of the property after which allegedly solid signatures and positioned the non-public info of true Marrero heirs on different paperwork, in order that she might promote and switch the title to the house.
With the paperwork in, Ramos bought the home to Yuan Kuei Li for $950,000 on April 25, 2024. That very same day, Li allegedly bought it to Abdur Rahman and his firm, Nice Neck Acquisitions, for $1.5 million.
The paperwork hid the truth that neither Rahman nor Nice Neck Acquisitions ever paid Li for the property, and Li by no means really acquired the $950,000 to amass the constructing. The defendants all allegedly used the deed for 267 West 131st Avenue as collateral to safe a mortgage and building mortgage totaling $1,636,000.
“Throughout a time when housing is scarce,” D.A. Bragg mentioned in an announcement, “I can’t stand for fraudsters coming to Harlem to try to perpetrate these pernicious schemes. One of these alleged conduct preys on longtime New Yorkers, and we’ll prosecute those that reap the benefits of householders.”
D.A. Bragg mentioned that he desires Ramos, Li, and Rahman to be held accountable: they every face costs associated to mortgage fraud and identification theft. However he additionally desires to see Okryun Marrero’s rightful heirs regain their property.
However, as with different current instances involving Black New Yorkers whose property has been stolen, 267 West 131st Avenue is at the moment nonetheless listed as owned by Nice Neck Acquisitions. The constructing’s true house owners should hold the strain on to get their property again.
Solny conviction highlights systemic gaps
Carmela Charrington, whose household has been a sufferer of deed theft, lately helped set up the Individuals’s Coalition to Cease Deed Theft. She says many in her group have turn into suspicious of presidency officers who’re supposed to help victims however usually appear unable to assist them get well their houses. “We’ve no method to search justice,” Charrington instructed AmNews. “Once we go to the police or district legal professional, we get no aid.”
The state of affairs involving the disbarred legal professional Sanford Solny highlights this concern. On June 5, Solny, 68, was convicted of stealing the deeds to 11 residential properties in Brooklyn. Following a bench trial earlier than Brooklyn Supreme Courtroom Justice Danny Ok. Chun, Solny was discovered responsible of 13 counts of third-degree legal possession of stolen property, three counts of first-degree scheme to defraud, and one depend of third-degree grand larceny.
Solny, who had beforehand pleaded responsible to felony possession of stolen property in Queens in 2018 and was on probation, was taken into custody final week following a probation listening to. He’ll stay incarcerated till his upcoming October 22 sentencing in Brooklyn, the place he faces further jail time.
However even after Solny’s conviction, two of his victims — Patrice and Wendy Sawadogo — are nonetheless preventing to reclaim their houses. Solny had stolen two properties from them, each supposedly below authorized maintain, but one was nonetheless unlawfully bought.
In an announcement, the Sawadogos mentioned they have been “assured that our houses could be returned following Solny’s prosecution. As a substitute, we have been shocked to study that our property at 406 East twenty first Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226 was bought for roughly $1,000,000, regardless of being below a court-ordered authorized maintain. The standing of our second property, 729 Eldert Lane, Brooklyn, NY 11208, stays unknown. For greater than 14 years, Sanford Solny unlawfully managed our properties, collected hire, and disadvantaged us of possession. Now, as victims lastly await justice, our property has been bought out from below us, and we’re being served eviction notices to vacate our personal houses.”
Rachel Cyprien, an organizer with the Black Owners Preservation Coalition (BHPC), a grassroots alliance preventing to cease deed theft and finish the systemic erasure of Black generational wealth, says she can be deeply pissed off with the system.
“What I really feel is that there are a number of Sanford Solnys on the market,” Cyprien mentioned. “And the Black neighborhood, particularly, is being harmed…
“I understood what this man was doing — stealing houses. He was stealing individuals’s houses, and other people acted like he was taking insignificant little somethings. However we’re speaking about individuals’s houses — sanctuaries the place they sleep, the place their households collect. They’re houses. Properties. And the way in which he was handled with such child gloves boggles my thoughts. It hurts me to my core. It made me actually indignant. He took 50 adjournments earlier than he was lastly arrested, and he ought to have been caught a very long time in the past.”
