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From
the Forum:
A Queens man who took advantage of his friendship with a 101-year-old neighbor is facing up to 15 years in prison for tricking the centenarian into signing over the deed to his home.
Authorities say Ricardo Bentham, 58, of 118th Avenue, has been charged with grand larceny and other crimes for allegedly conning a neighborhood friend into transferring the deed of his long-time home into the defendant’s name in October of 2017.
According to the criminal complaint, the defendant submitted a quitclaim deed to be filed with the city on October 5, 2017. The document stated that 101 year-old Woodrow Washington was transferring ownership of his 143rd Street home which has a value in excess of $50,000 to the defendant for a sale price of $0. The victim realized something was wrong when he received a letter from the Department of Finance stating that the deed to his home had been transferred to Bentham. An inquiry was conducted and revealed the document that was filed bears the signature of the Mr. Washington along with a notary stamp and signature of a notary.
Mr. Washington stated that the signature on the form is his, however, he is adamant that he never signed any documents in front of a notary.
Mr. Theodore White, the 93-year-old notary, acknowledged knowing Bentham and would often sign documents for him because he trusted him. The document bearing his signature was missing the notary seal, which White always added to a document.
Mr. Washington identified the defendant as a neighborhood friend who offered to help him collect rent from tenants. He recalled signing documents that the defendant brought to his residence and that some were blank.
From the
NY Times:
They wandered into New York City government offices this week, indignant at how the cogs of bureaucracy had slowed their grand plans of thievery.
Lasharan Amos, 42, arrived on Tuesday at the New York City sheriff’s office in Queens, wondering why the city was taking so long to give her ownership of a home that the authorities said in fact belonged to her mother.
Two days later, Jethro Chappelle Jr., a former convict who uses a wheelchair because of a gunshot wound, did the same. He took an elevator to the 13th-floor City Register’s office in Manhattan, demanding to know why the city had not yet recorded two deeds he had filed for abandoned properties in Harlem.
Ms. Amos and Mr. Chappelle were promptly arrested and charged with various counts of grand larceny, perjury and offering false statements to public officials. Their arrests were the first since June, when the Department of Finance, in coordination with the city sheriff’s office, began flagging irregularities in a deed transfer system that has long gone unguarded.
Working with corrupt notaries public, or sometimes simply by searching public records online, those inclined to have long been able to forge property deeds, claiming, for instance, to have taken ownership of a family member’s home or a building that had long been neglected. As long as the documents were properly formatted, officials had little choice but to record the deed transfer.
When there were gaps in required information or other problems with the forms, the documents were just returned to the filing parties with instructions about how to fix the flaws. Tricking the system was so easy that people like Mr. Chappelle, 51, who had been arrested on an attempted murder charge in 2003, and convicted of assault a year later, and Ms. Amos apparently were confident enough to announce themselves to city agencies.
From the
NY Times:
John L. Sampson, the State Senate leader, performed legal work for a Queens real estate broker who was being investigated by state authorities on allegations of fraud and predatory lending, and was disciplined for acting as a notary for the broker after his notary license had expired, according to state documents.
The broker, Edul Ahmad, has been at the center of a loan scandal involving United States Representative Gregory W. Meeks of Queens, who this month admitted that he had failed to disclose a $40,000 loan from Mr. Ahmad on his federal filings. The loan appeared to come with no strings attached, or interest. Mr. Meeks repaid it three years after the fact, once it became a matter of scrutiny.
The generous terms of the loan have raised questions about Mr. Ahmad and his political relationships. New details about Mr. Ahmad’s past emerged after The New York Times submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the New York Department of State, which investigates improprieties by licensed real estate brokers. Mr. Ahmad has been the defendant in five cases investigated by the department involving allegations of fraud and predatory lending.
Mr. Ahmad was fined $750 in one case and had his license suspended for 30 days in another one. Two other cases, initiated in 2007 and 2008, were referred to the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, but a spokeswoman for Mr. Brown’s office said Tuesday night that it could not immediately determine what became of the referrals.
Mr. Sampson, the highest-ranking official in the Senate, is described in the documents as having performed a variety of legal work, from meeting with an investigator from the Department of State about documents being collected from Mr. Ahmad to notarizing an affidavit of a former employee of Mr. Ahmad’s.
The work took place through 2008, before Mr. Sampson became leader of the Democratic caucus in the summer of 2009, but he continues to act as a lawyer for Mr. Ahmad.
