The city is dealing with a spate of cases where crooks swipe homes from under the owner’s nose through deed fraud schemes, officials said Monday.
The Department of Finance is pursuing 525 open investigations involving 671 properties across the five boroughs, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens, according to the agency’s testimony to a City Council hearing.
The thefts involve either outright forgery - where a deed to change ownership is filed with a fake signature - or scams where homeowners are talked into signing over their property, often on the promise of help with a delinquent mortgage or other financial trouble.
14 comments:
How in hell did this get so far out of hand?
"How in hell did this get so far out of hand?" Easy - just like all the charitable scams following 9/11 this is directly to the "foreclosure crisis". Con-artists are opportunists.
I think the answer is that it was always possible-- even decades ago-- and that it was always happening, even back then. And even back then no one was watching. Word travels among the scum that this is an easy scam, and the numbers explode.
Hang the shysters. They're contributing to the gentrification of the city:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/grim-racist-methods-of-one-brooklyn-landlord.html
Department of Finance registers deeds, fraud is the responsibility of the district attorney.
How in hell did this get so far out of hand?
When people decided not to learn English. This happened to the china woman up the block from me. Some guys told her that they were there from the insurance company to assess the damages done to her home after she had a small fire the day before that. She didn't understand too well and they tried to force their way into the house after she didn't understand. Lucky for her,my father is very nosy and happened to be outside at the time and he told them to get the hell out before he gets his baseball bat. They tried threatening him but my father doesn't back down. 74 years old and grew up in the south bronx in the 40's. You can take a man out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto out of a man. Anyway,after arguing with them,they finally I guess got the point and left. My father told me that they tried to get her deed and make her sign papers claiming that it was for insurance purposes when it really isn't. He said they follow the fire trucks around when they see they are on a call.
These people prey on niave people and lord knows that there is too many of them out there.
What a crappy story. Just what you expect from the Daily Snooze.
Fraud, theft, forgery, filing a false instrument. Is there not a law that makes these things a crime in this situation? How can it be hard to bring to trial? They were trying to steal a home! Doesn't that meet criteria for a felony on value alone?
The District Attorney has not been doing too well with alot of things for many many years -- rumor has it that alot of his cases have been looked into and re-opened -
You can register with NYC to be notified anytime a document is recorded related to your property. I have done this not only for my own house, but also for my (elderly) mother's house.
Old scam with new victims.
Thanks for the registration info, will help a lot of people.
how does someone purchase a home in Queens and not know English?
The city needs some federal help to close down all the cases. there is alot that the media isn't telling you. This problem is very rampant.
they should investigate the LAWYERS - especially those in Jackson House - they've been helping others to rob houses for decades for a price.
"There's a sucker born every minute" - David Hannum
Stated in criticism of both P. T. Barnum, and his customers.
The phrase is often credited to Barnum himself.
Some things never change...
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