Migrants hoodwinked by hotel shelter worker realty hustle

 

THE CITY 

Around a dozen migrant families desperate to move out of a Staten Island shelter said they were scammed out of thousands of dollars by an employee of the shelter, who promised them leases and furniture in newly renovated apartments, THE CITY has learned. 

The employee was fired after “serious allegations and evidence of dishonest and fraudulent activities” came to the hotel’s attention, according to a letter posted inside the Holiday Inn Express and dated Oct. 2 that identifies the employee as Cythia Guevara Rodriguez. 

THE CITY interviewed more than a dozen shelter residents who said they fell victim to Rodriguez and also reviewed the fake leases they signed, screenshots of Zelle transfers and messages they exchanged on WhatsApp and Facebook with Guevara that show  families willing to do anything to move out of a shelter and into apartments of their own doing business with someone who appeared ready to capitalize on their desperation. 

The situation at the Holiday Inn Express highlights the troubles faced by migrants families in shelters as they try to find places of their own before the city potentially puts them on a clock to move out. 

She played with the emotions of our children. Our children were so excited, they thought they were going to get out of here,” said Jennifer, 41, a Venezuelan mother to a one-year-old who asked her last name be withheld. She and another couple said they’d paid Guevara $1,700 in a series of cash and Zelle payments, and were expecting to move together into a house with a parking spot on Elverton Avenue in Great Kills on Oct. 16. 

“I can’t sleep thinking, ‘what happened actually happened,’” she said in Spanish. “It won’t leave my mind.”

Guevara, for her part, denies the allegations, telling THE CITY on Thursday that she’d taken money from two families and had intended to get them apartments through Craigslist but she hadn’t been able to find them yet. 

“They were impatient,” she said, adding that “they’re gonna get their money back.” 

Others, she said, must have made photocopies of leases and were fabricating additional allegations against her. 

“A lot of people right now what they’re doing is trying to gang up on me,” she said. “They’re just trying to make it, you know, worse than it is.”

Jaclyn Stoll, a spokesperson for Project Hospitality, the nonprofit with a $5.3 million contract to run the Holiday Inn Express migrant shelter, said Guevara was not an employee of the nonprofit and declined to comment while an investigation was pending. She deferred further comment to the city’s Department of Homeless Services or DHS. 

“It is unconscionable that any individual would attempt to exploit vulnerable families for material gain. Whenever we learn of an incident that puts the wellbeing of our clients at risk, we work with our not-for-profit provider partners to immediately investigate the situation and take swift and appropriate action to address the issue at hand, said Nicholas Jacobelli, a spokesperson for DHS.

“We serve incredibly vulnerable populations, and we expect all those who interact with our clients to treat them with dignity and respect.”

Fraudulent company head going to the pokey

From Crains:

The head of a consulting company that faked safety inspections on dozens of construction sites in the city will spend up to three years in state prison, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced Tuesday.

Richard Marini, 62, ran a company called Avanti Building Consultants, which was supposedly staffed with licensed safety managers who could inspect building sites. But not only were Marini's inspectors unlicensed, according to Vance, they also had no experience in construction safety at all, in most cases.

Marini scoured Craigslist and paid bellhops, musicians and short-order cooks to simply sign off on safety logs in their own names, or forge the names of licensed safety inspectors—one of whom was dead. Avanti Building Consultants inspected about 40 sites.

Hoverboard seekers robbed at hooker haven

From the Daily News:

Two Long Island men made a late-night trip to Queens, hoping to buy a “Kool Wheels” hoverboard, only to find themselves ambushed, robbed and bound, the victims told the Daily News.

Brian Taylor, 40, and Walter Roth, 34, went to a home on 103rd St. and 33rd Ave. in Jackson Heights, a known brothel according to cops, on Sunday, answering an ad selling hoverboards for $100 to $200, the victims said.

As they entered, three men grabbed them from behind, one of them brandishing a black handgun, police sources and the victims said.

Steinway Mansion for sale again?

This was posted on Craigslist.

Sad Japanese-style home in Kew Gardens now for sale

From DNA Info:

A Japanese-style house in Kew Gardens, which the Department of Buildings declared unsafe in 2009, has been listed for sale on Craigslist for $1,200,000.

The house, at 84-62 Beverly Rd., was built in the 1920s and was initially a neighborhood attraction. But neighbors said the owners moved out more than a decade ago, allowing the house to decay.

An inspector who came to examine the house in September 2009 — after the agency received complaints that it was unguarded — found the front door and garage door left open, according to records provided by the Department of Buildings.

The agency then issued two unsafe building violations, which remain open.

In January 2010, the DOB obtained a court order to seal the building by pouring concrete into its windows in order to make it safe, the agency said.

But the ad on Craigslist describes the 3-story property as a “huge beautiful 1 family house.”

"Tons of options," the listing says.

The ad also notes that the 3,600 square-foot house features a garage and a driveway. The lot, where the house sits, is 7,000 square feet, the ad says.

A man whose phone is listed in the ad declined to answer questions on Friday.

They faked it

From the NY Times:

A building inspector visited a scaffolding last summer on East 90th Street in Manhattan, where workers were restoring the exterior of an apartment building. The inspector noticed something amiss in the site’s safety log: The safety manager who had supposedly signed the log that day could not have done so; he had recently died.

That oddity led New York City officials to investigate, and on Wednesday criminal charges were filed against two companies that provide safety managers at construction sites. The companies, Avanti Building Consultants and NYCB Engineering Group, were accused of hiring unqualified people to pose as licensed site safety managers.

The companies hired people through Craigslist — hairdressers, short-order cooks, musicians, day laborers — to pretend to be safety managers, court papers said. In dozens of cases, the employees skipped the inspections and forged the signatures of real site safety managers on logs, the papers said.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said the companies compromised safety at 43 sites in New York City over two years, mostly older scaffolded buildings where workers were restoring facades. Three managers and four employees were arrested on Wednesday.

CB1 member headed to the pokey

From Astoria Post:

An Astoria man who conned 14 victims by taking their deposits on an apartment that wasn’t available pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny earlier this month.

Mario Lalicata, a former teacher and community board one member, was sentenced to four months in prison and five years probation.

Lalicata, dubbed by some as the ‘landlord from Hell,’ would lure his victims with an ad on Craigslist for an apartment located at 25-55 48th Street, the same building where he lived.

He would show the victims the apartment and then ask for a security deposit, the first month’s rent and–in some cases–money to make improvements. Then, according to the district attorneys office, Lalicata would become harder and harder to get in touch with, until eventually he could not be reached.

Who kept reappointing this guy to CB1?

Illegal hotels are even at housing projects

From the NY Post:

Public-housing residents are renting rooms to strangers — making extra dough over the holidays while taxpayers fund their apartments, The Post has learned.

Several ads for nightly or monthly sublets were posted on Craigslist last week, including a $650 room in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay Houses — which was swooped up in a few days.

“Huge room available immediately in a 3-bedroom apartment for rent,” the ad says. “Females only . . . no drugs, no smoking, no drama.”

The tenant, who listed a cellphone number and a New York City Housing Authority address, declared that two people could also share the room for $350 each.

That’s an extra $7,800 a year in the pocket of someone who is living on the public dime.

Meanwhile, other NYCHA residents are turning their government-funded homes into cheap hotels.

Mike Velasquez, 38, who lives in the Alfred E. Smith Houses, has turned his two-bedroom apartment into a hotel — offering a private room or sofa for $50 to $100 per night.

“I don’t care,” he told The Post when confronted about the legality of his rental. “There’s plenty of people who rent rooms — everyone does it.

“I pay my rent. I can do what I want.”

Velasquez’s 13th-floor apartment overlooks the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges and is blocks from the South Street Seaport. Web sites show that he has been a secret innkeeper since at least 2011.

If he rents out the apartment three days a week, that’s up to $1,200 in extra spending cash a month.

City turns blind eye to squalid apartments

From Eyewitness News:

Tenants are found living in potentially dangerous apartments repeatedly cited for safety violations.

Why is New York City letting them live in what could turn into a fire trap?

The tenants pay their rent, but what they have to do to stay warm and cook their meals are serious fire threats.

The building in the Bronx Hunts Point section screams out fire trap.

Up to eight or nine rooms are each rented out through Craig's List to people desperate for a roof over their heads.

It's a fire just waiting to happen and the city knows it.

Since 2005, the Buildings Department has repeatedly fined the landlord.

The landlord has more than $70,000 in unpaid fines for illegally renting up to 15 rooms at a time, endangering lives.

How foreclosures get in that condition

Short term leases are illegal

From NY1:

Ads for short-term leases, generally with fees, are constantly on display on Craigslist and other rental sites. They seem harmless, but most people don’t realize they’re illegal.

Changes were made to the law back in May to keep visitors safe by offering specific requirements for buildings that can be used as hotels. The net effect is that anyone in a multiple-dwelling building is prohibited from renting out a home for less than 30 days.

Rogers says many New Yorkers who rent out their homes have no idea they are breaking the law and those who do assume they won’t get caught. That’s not true.

Real Estate attorney Steven Wagner says most landlords and boards already had rules prohibiting short-term leases because they create health and safety concerns for other residents, but the law makes it illegal with stiff penalties.

“The fines can range from 1,600 to 5,000 on a first offense, and they go up exponentially after that. But there are a whole other set of issues with the landlord and you can lose your apartment,” says Wagner.

In extreme cases, repeat offenses could land people in jail.

Best coverage of lame press conference

From the Queens Tribune:

The work depicts a cherub-faced, nearly-naked man who oddly resembles actor Matt Damon standing victorious over vice and corruption, as embodied by two strange siren/mermaid hybrids, their faces and bodies crumpled in visible agony...

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Kew Gardens) and Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) held a tongue-in-cheek press conference damning the artwork as sexist and insensitive to women, calling for its sale via Craigslist.

"It's ugly and offensive today and we want it out of Queens," Weiner said. "It represents an eyesore. This statue is neither civil nor virtuous - and it's time for it to go."

But defenders of the statue lambasted the electeds' claims, criticizing their misinterpretation of an artistic work. More than differing interpretations, some outlined a notable point: after having laced history books with notorious surnames like Donald Manes, Alan Hevesi, Brian McLaughlin, Anthony Seminerio and Hiram Monserrate, maybe a sculpted rock is the closest Queens can come to actual civic virtue.

OH YEAH!

And our old friend Sergey weighed in on the controversy:

To The Editor:

With an ongoing recession and a civil war brewing in Libya, it was unbelievable to see my local congressman grandstanding before the press to remove "Triumph of Civic Virtue," the famed but neglected nude sculpture, from the lawn of Borough Hall. If Anthony Weiner had some appreciation of art history, he would understand that the image is an allegory, and not an endorsement of chauvinism. It is shameful enough to live in a borough where history is paved over by development and crumbling away in neglect.

Now, we have the forces of political correctness working to destroy our borough's history. The fact that the statue was designed by Frederick MacMonnies, sculpted by the Piccirilli brothers, and funded by a woman named Angelina Crane does not deter Weiner. Neither does the fact that my mother, who happens to be a woman and a voter, finds no offense with the statue, and is more offended by the ongoing recession and rising gas prices.

As an art educator, I tell my students that a monument serves as a physical link to the past, its ideas and its imagery. Even fascist, communist and Confederate monuments have much to teach us about the societies they represented, as opposed to a society that only cares about its own moment in the sun.

Perhaps some elected officials would prefer a rootless Queens, where a Flushing film palace is collapsing, space-age towers from the 1964 World's Fair are rusting, and an allegorical statue that condemns corruption is crumbling. I pray that Queens will be saved for future generations to cherish.

Sergey Kadinsky
Rego Park

Greenwood Cemetery has expressed interest.

And Weiner's proposal has made him look like an ass country-wide!

Weiner's waste of time

Out-of-town renters duped by scam

From the NY Post:

What seemed like a dream deal of spending the summer living in one of New York's hottest neighborhoods has become a nightmare for more than a dozen out-of-towners.

Many of the victims -- college students and young professionals -- told The Post they were duped out of thousands of dollars by two Brooklyn men posing as leaseholders of a massive loft within a new luxury apartment complex at 175 Powers St. in Williamsburg.

The duo, Desmond Eaddy and Ronnie Barron, allegedly used Craigslist and other ads to reel in the unsuspecting victims, including eight from Ireland, and collect at least $14,000.

Left with empty pockets, many of the victims say they've spent the past month working odd jobs and scrambling just to raise enough cash for food and shelter.

The ads claimed rooms were available for $1,100 monthly "in a brand new, huge, two-floor loft."

But Eaddy and Barron, both 29, never had the legal authority to sublet the space for residential use -- only a handshake agreement with building's owners to use it for film and TV production.

The duo hired contractors to carve up the commercial space and convert it to an eight-bedroom "illegal hostel," according the building's existing tenants.

But construction was halted long before the apartment was complete, although the out-of-towners had paid to move in by mid-June.

Pied-à-Crap!

These ads would be funny if they weren't so dangerous. Click for larger version.

Queens Craigslist pimp gets 25 years

From the Daily News:

A Queens pimp who "bought" a young woman for $2,000 - and advertised her sex services on Craigslist - was sentenced to 25 years to life.

David Brown, 32, paid $2,000 to an ex-girlfriend for the 19-year-old victim, who was described as homeless and vulnerable.

He took nude pictures of the victim and then posted them online, advertising the woman as a sex slave.

Over 12 days in August 2008 she was forced into sex with 30 men, and Brown collected payments ranging from $60 to $200, prosecutors said.

Brown was convicted on sex trafficking, kidnapping and other charges. He was the first to be charged under a new harsh sex-trafficking law signed by disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in June 2007.

Police seek Astoria laptop robber

From NY1:

Police are asking for the public's help to track down a man wanted in connection with a robbery in Astoria.

Investigators say the suspect responded to an ad on Craigslist about a laptop for sale. They say he then met the seller outside 2840 31st Street around 10:30 p.m. on May 31st.

Police say he sprayed the victim with mace before running off with the computer.

The suspect is described as about six feet tall and in his 20s.

Anyone with information about the case is being asked to contact Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-577-TIPS, by texting TIP577 to CRIMES, or by going to NYPDCrimeStoppers.com.

"Homeboy hookup" a scam

From Fox 5:

Ever hear of the homeboy hookup? It's part of a big scam on Craigslist involving apartments for rent. Arnold Diaz looked into the case and busted the scam wide open.

Arnold caught up with a guy who claims to be a landlord, but is really a con man advertising apartments he doesn't own. He lures people in with promises of low rent and free utilities.