Mayor de Blasio got mortgage extensions from bank lender owned by one of the Podolsky brothers

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio got mortgages on his Park Slope homes from a bank founded by the brother of men who received $173 million from the city in a controversial real estate deal, The Daily News has learned.

The bank de Blasio secured the mortgages from is Wall Street Mortgage Bankers, which operates under the name Power Express Mortgage Bankers, city Finance Department records show.

The bank’s treasurer, secretary, former president and founder is Abraham Podolsky, public records and multiple sources revealed.

 Abraham is the brother of slumlords Jay and Stuart Podolsky, who earlier this year sold 17 buildings to the city for $173 million. Abraham did not respond to several messages.

 The $173 million deal — ostensibly aimed at providing affordable housing for poor New Yorkers — came under intense scrutiny for months from critics who pointed to Jay and Stuart’s criminal past, a federal probe into their real estate empire and wildly divergent appraisals on the land they ultimately sold to the city.

Abraham’s company’s loans to de Blasio as well as his family connections are now renewing concerns about potential conflicts of interest surrounding the deal.

Fordham University political science professor Christina Greer said she wants to see the web of connections investigated.

“Something doesn’t smell right. I’m not willing to say something is wrong just yet,” she said. “...This is worth an inquiry.”
 

City Comptroller Scott Stringer is probing appraisals of the Podolsky properties — one city appraisal valued the 17 properties as low as $49.67 million. In April, he demanded de Blasio’s administration make them available through a subpoena.

Stringer declined to comment on that investigation, de Blasio’s mortgages and whether those mortgages potentially could have given Jay and Stuart Podolsky any leverage during negotiations.

Mayor de Blasio’s hand-picked Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett refused to comment as well.

The ironic thing about this disgusting bribe (which the mayor is allowed to get away with) is that this hook up with the Podolskys, who use to run dilapidated and rodent infested cluster apartment buildings to house the homeless for decades, technically prevents the mayor from being homeless himself.

Ex-con mortgage broker and his sister opens up immigration legal aid firm

 

Queens Eagle

A once-influential TV personality who was jailed for ripping off South Asian immigrants in a mortgage fraud and identity theft scheme has started a new endeavor: immigrant legal service provider.

Jacob Milton, who hosted a TV show geared toward Queens’ Bangladeshi community, and his sister Nira Niru operate International Legal Services LLC, a legal services provider that conducts free consultations and connects clients with attorneys specializing in immigration, civil and criminal law, according to the company website.

Milton pleaded guilty to grand larceny in 2008 after using his influence in the Bangladeshi community and position as a mortgage broker at the Jackson Heights firm Griffin Mortgage to steal clients’ identities, apply for mortgages worth more than $1 million and rack up credit card bills totaling more than $15,700 in the victims’ names.

“In four instances, the victims declined to proceed with their applications, stating they were too expensive,” said Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown after Milton was first arraigned in October 2017. “Little did they suspect how much money their trip to the mortgage company would actually cost them.”

Milton was also charged with additional counts of identity theft and spent more than three years in prison.

Niru, his sister, worked as his secretary at Griffin Mortgage and was also charged in the fraud and identity theft scheme.

Short sale specialists

From Buzzfeed:

On a bustling block in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, above a pharmacy and a bagel shop, sits the unmarked office of My Ideal Property. The long blocks outside are punctuated with Russian Cyrillic signs. Rego Park and nearby Forest Hills are home to a tight-knit community of Bukharians, first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Central Asia who migrated to the area after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The men, who called Serhant in 2015 with a deal, grew up in this diaspora. One of them, Isaac Aronov, graduated from Forest Hills High school in 2004. Public records show he landed a job as a mortgage broker at an office in Rego Park. It was the heyday of the boom. Housing prices were higher than they’d ever been. But the frothy market he entered was already heading toward disaster.

After the crash, Aronov, like Wall Street, was nimble enough to recognize that there was opportunity in distress. In 2008, he started My Ideal Property with some friends from the neighborhood. They were young, ambitious, and willing to work hard. With what one former partner described on his website as “zero experience or financial support,” they began buying homes in some stage of foreclosure.

They gravitated toward the majority black and Latino neighborhoods that were hubs of subprime lending before the crash, and later accounted for over three-quarters of New York City’s foreclosure filings. Taking out short-term, high-interest private loans from wealthy backers in Manhattan and Long Island, they bought fast.

It was a lucrative time to be buying, and investors across the city were busy. A recent analysis by the nonprofit Center for NYC Neighborhoods found that, between 2014 and 2016, more than 5,800 homes were “flipped,” or bought and sold within a year. Half of them were in some stage of foreclosure. Within this rush, the men behind My Ideal Property carved out a significant niche. By 2016, the company had done more than $250 million in deals and employed over 100 people, according one founder's website.

But that aggressive move into troubled neighborhoods has come at a cost for their inhabitants.

Meeks occupies mansion illegally

From the Daily News:

Rep. Gregory Meeks has been living in his 6,000-square-foot Queens mansion for nearly a decade — without city authorization.

He never got a required certificate of occupancy for the custom-built Hollis home, finished in late 2006.

A temporary certificate of occupancy, which he needed to get his mortgage, expired Jan. 4, 2007, and was never renewed, city records show.

The home has created controversy for Meeks.

He borrowed $624,000 to buy the $830,000 property and took out a $78,000 line of credit.

Then, in 2007, Meeks got a $40,000 “loan” from businessman Edul Ahmad that he said went to furnishing and other household needs. He made no payments on it and claimed to have lost the loan paperwork.

It was paid only in 2010 after the FBI began probing Ahmad, later indicted in a mortgage-fraud scheme.

The House Ethics Committee opened a probe after Meeks failed to report the loan. It dropped the matter after Ahmad refused to help.

To repay Ahmad, Meeks borrowed $60,000, taking out a mortgage with a company belonging to Democratic donor Dennis Mehiel.

Banks vs. blight

From the Epoch Times:

New York regulators said Monday that 11 lenders have agreed to monitor and maintain vacant properties in an effort to protect them and combat neighborhood blight.

The banks, mortgage companies and credit unions represent nearly 70 percent of the New York market and will adopt practices to limit the damage from so-called “zombie properties,” according to the Department of Financial Services. They agreed to best practices that include checking within 60 days any residential properties that are delinquent on loans to begin determining if they are abandoned, the department said.

The 11 lenders are Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi Mortgage, Ocwen, Nationstar, PHH, Green Tree Servicing, Astoria Bank, Bethpage Federal Credit Union, M&T Bank and Ridgewood Savings Bank.

“The wave of zombie properties that arose in the wake of the financial crisis harms local communities and threatens the long-term health of the mortgage market,” department Superintendent Ben Lawsky said. Many homeowners defaulted on mortgages in the aftermath of the 2008 national financial crisis when the housing bubble burst. “These commonsense actions are an immediate and vital part of repairing that damage as we continue to pursue additional legislative reforms,” he said.

What's the real plan for the Klein Farm?

From the Queens Chronicle:

Area civic leaders remain concerned about the future of the Klein farm property in Fresh Meadows following its recent sale to a convicted felon who illegally tore down trees on the protected site.

Ziming Shen of Manhattan, who runs a preschool on the historic Klein property at 194-15 73 Ave., remains under house arrest for stealing funds designated for poor children’s lunches from his chain of Red Apple preschools.

Although Shen was hauled into court in May for not meeting his obligation of paying the $5.2 million judgment against him, he bought the Klein property a month later for $5.6 million and got a $1.45 million mortgage, according to the city’s Department of Finance records.

Shen had been renting the property under a six-year lease for the preschool from another convicted felon, Thomas Huang, who bought it in 2003 for $4.3 million as part of his now-defunct Audrey Realty.

Huang had wanted to build 22 two-family houses or 18 dwellings, but both plans failed since the site is located in a special planned community preservation district.

Last year, Shen illegally destroyed several mature trees on the property and illegally constructed a driveway. He was fined $1,600. Since then, the trees have not been replaced and the front yard on the 2.5-acre site has been neglected.

Preschool classes are now held in an adjacent house on the property. In the past, the large brick farmhouse was used for the school.

Area civic activists, who for years have wanted the property converted to public use as a farm museum or similar institution, are puzzled by the recent high-priced purchase since Shen will be unable to develop the property.

Parkway sold for $1M at auction

From the Times Ledger:

A Rego Park-based realty company seized the shuttered Parkway Hospital property with a $1 million bid during a foreclosure auction in Queens Civil Court last Friday.

The same firm, Auberge Grand Central Limited Liability Company, purchased the defunct hospital’s mortgages for $6.5 million in 2012 and then had a firm assess the 56,400-square-foot lot’s market rate at $6 million, court documents show.

After emerging from a brief bidding war, a representative from Auberge Grand Central said he was contractually prevented from discussing plans for the property.

The firm previously said it wanted to transform the six-story building into condominiums through a partnership with Jasper Venture Group LLC.

Owning a home in Queens darn near impossible these days

From the NY Post:

“There are homes for first-time buyers, but you have to look around,” he says.

That’s what Ray DeWire and his wife, Brittany, both young middle-class professionals, recently did. They lived in Kew Gardens, where “we were having problems parking our car,” Ray DeWire said.

They wanted to stay in Queens, but “it was tough to find something in Queens,” namely, a one-family house at the right price and with the amenities that they wanted.

Jamaica Estates residents Mekale Jackson and his wife, Aisha, two young art-industry professionals with middle-class incomes, have a year-old daughter whom they want to grow up in a home. But it’s been rough.

“It’s a difficult environment [to buy in New York]. Queens is out of the question,” Mekale Jackson said. “You would have to pay $388,000 and then maybe more to fix up the house. We also want to find a home in a place where we are not going to pay for private school.”

It's ok, we know what you really mean. Let's continue:

One factor in the higher prices locally is that the supply of new units is not growing fast enough. Also, since the housing meltdown of 2008, it has become more difficult for many people to obtain a mortgage.

Another potential roadblock is the average down payment of 20 percent. That means the prospective New York City-area homeowner must have $97,225 up front. Obtaining a mortgage also requires an annual household income of just under $90,000, HSH.com said.

Fannie Mae ❤ SkyView Parc

From Crains:

The massive Sky View Parc condominium development in Flushing, Queens, has received a key thumbs up from Fannie Mae. The federally backed institution will insure mortgages in two of the development's three buildings, according to their owner Onex Real Estate Partners on Friday. The news marks an important milestone for the long-troubled project.

The two towers, at 40-26 and 40-22 College Point Blvd. in downtown Flushing, are 75% sold or in contract, according to Onex. Sales at the 448-unit development have rebounded since last year when the sponsors settled a lawsuit with dozens of buyers at the development. The buyers had sued to get out of their contracts to buy $50 million worth of apartments. The settlement gave them more than $3 million.

Two years ago Related Cos. was tapped to manage the residential property to boost sales. Marketing of Sky View Parc began four years ago. Originally, Muss Development was a partner in the project but it is unclear if Muss still has a stake in the project. Onex took over in 2010. Sales of 134-unit Tower 2, the last building to rise at Sky View Parc, have not begun yet. The status of that building could not be determined immediately. Muss couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Closing costs more in NY

From the Daily News:

HERE’S ONE more reason why it’s so ridiculously expensive to live in New York: We have the highest mortgage closing costs in the country.

For the third year in a row, New York State leads the way in fees associated with getting a home loan, according to a new survey from Bankrate.com.

The average closing cost here is a whopping $5,435 for a $200,000 mortgage on a single-family home purchased with a 20% down payment.

Compare that with Missouri, the state with the lowest closing costs, where they pay an average of $3,006. The national average is $3,754.

In doing its analysis, Bankrate looked at fees charged by lenders, as well as third-party fees for services such as appraisals and title insurance. All of those things cost more in New York, Bankrate said.

The news wasn’t all bad. Closing costs fell 12% in New York as banks competed to snare business.

Melissa Cohn, president of Manhattan Mortgage Co., noted that New York homebuyers are also saddled with a mortgage recording tax. In New York City, that amounts to about 2% of the loan amount, she said.

New York State also requires that banks use attorneys when closing on a loan. That raises your closing costs, too.

Forest Hills mortgage fraud

From Forest Hills Patch:

Two attorneys with a Forest Hills practice were convicted of mortgage fraud this week, according to the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn.

Matthew Burstein and Aaron Rabinowitz, both 40, were found guilty on ten felony counts of fraud for illegally obtaining $25 million in loans from half a dozen lending agencies, including Countrywide and Wells Fargo, part of a Byzantine scheme to enrich themselves in the midst of a down housing market.

According to U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, the defendants worked with a co-conspirator network of straw buyers and real estate agents to draw up dummy sale documents for homes in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. They would then file for mortgages and pay themselves attorney's fees from the falsified loans.

The incidents took place between January 2006 and September 2008.

Brian cheated his mama

From the NY Post:

Crooked ex-politician Brian McLaughlin's mom has added her name to the list of victims in his epic, $3.1 million rip-off scheme.

Court papers filed by Ilene McLaughlin, 82, say she lost $145,000 that the former Queens assemblyman borrowed against his swanky second home on Long Island's exclusive North Shore.

The widowed granny, who lives in a modest co-op apartment in Flushing, says in her self-filed court documents that she handed over the dough in March 2006 but never got a nickel back.

Instead, the Democratic former labor leader forfeited all his proceeds when he sold the house for nearly $1.2 million two years later as part of the settlement of the racketeering case against him.

His mother's Manhattan federal court suit seeks to force the Justice Department to repay the entire mortgage, plus unspecified interest, "as stated in my contract."

The aging pensioner, who hung up on a reporter that called for comment, joins the lengthy list of marks that McLaughlin preyed on to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, a country club and a string of mistresses.

Her son is currently serving 10 years in the slammer for swindling taxpayers, political contributors, union members and even his local Little League, from which he looted $95,000.

SkyView Parc is really Mussed up!

From the Wall Street Journal:

In one of the largest cases of buyers remorse in New York, scores of people who agreed to purchase apartments in a new development in Queens filed suit Monday seeking the return of their deposits.

The suit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, could throw a wrench into the marketing efforts of Sky View Parc, a huge shopping center and condominium development that is planned to eventually include nearly 1,100 apartments in six towers.

The complex is a few blocks from the heart of the Flushing commercial district. It has been controversial because of its size and the impact it might have on local business and traffic.

When the development was first marketed in 2008, prices ranged from $385,000 for studios to more than $1.2 million for three-bedroom units on a high floor. Some prices have been raised slightly and some trimmed slightly since.

The complaint was filed on behalf of 67 would-be buyers in contracts to buy 41 condos. The complaint said that buyers wanted their money back because they were unable to obtain loans after the "collapse of the mortgage market" and were unable to close.

Their lawsuit said that the developers failed to file a disclosure statement. Such a statement is required in large developments under a federal law enacted in 1968 intended to help protect buyers from fraud in new real-estate subdivisions.

Konty's going up the river

From the NY Post:

A city real-estate developer yesterday pleaded guilty to masterminding a $92 million mortgage-fraud scheme.

Thomas Kontogiannis, 61, admitted in Brooklyn federal court that he bought land parcels in Brooklyn and Queens from 2001 to 2003, subdivided the properties, and obtained bogus appraisals to use on loan applications.

Straw buyers then applied for mortgages and took out multiple loans on the same properties, using mortgage and title companies also involved in the scheme, prosecutors said.

Kontogiannis faces more than 30 years behind bars under a plea agreement federal prosecutors.

Distressed properties to get assessments

From Crains:

The City Council launched a new program Thursday to give tenants in certain dilapidated properties a new weapon in their battle to improve building conditions. The initiative will focus on properties where excessive debt burdens taken on by the owners have severely limited their financial ability to make necessary repairs.

Engineers and architects, working on a pro-bono basis, will survey such buildings across the five boroughs and produce detailed reports on how extensive the damage is, what repairs are needed and how much those repairs will cost.

"This new program will help level the playing field,” said Maggie Russell-Ciardi, executive director of the advocacy group Tenants and Neighbors. “It will arm tenants with the information they need to determine what a truly supportable mortgage or sale price for their buildings would be. And it will help tenants refute false claims by owners and lenders that everything is fine in buildings that are heading rapidly towards financial failure."

The citywide program is an expansion of a pilot in which New York City-based Baer Architecture Group produced a detailed report on 10 foreclosed-upon Bronx buildings that argues the properties need up to $26.6 million in repairs, more than five times an earlier estimate by the properties' current overseer. The $35 million loan on the buildings—part of a portfolio bought by Los Angeles-based Milbank Real Estate at the height of the housing boom in 2007—is expected to be transferred to a new, undisclosed buyer next week.

Concern is high among elected officials, tenants and housing activists who worry that the properties—which are saddled with 3,261 code violations—will likely deteriorate further because the new owner is paying too much for the portfolio and won't be able to make needed repairs.

Livin' large at Meeks' McMansion

From the Daily News:

Dwarfing every house in the neighborhood, the 6,000-square-foot manse is guarded by security cameras and tucked nearly out of view at the end of a long driveway.

And it wasn't cheap.

Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks and his wife, Simone-Marie, paid $830,000 in 2006 for the then-new house, which is now at the center of ethical and legal questions facing the congressman.

One loan Meeks took out from a Queens businessman to help pay for the house recently has drawn FBI scrutiny.

City records give a glimpse inside the sprawling home, a McMansion on a quiet street in an otherwise blue-collar section of St. Albans.

"It's not appropriate for this neighborhood," said Meeks' next-door neighbor Kelly Miffiet, 40. "It sticks out like a sore thumb."

The two-story house - with a well-manicured lawn and a deck overlooking an expansive backyard - is hidden behind several other homes, on a lot that's just under half an acre.

According to plans for the house filed with the city Department of Buildings, the home built by Long Island developer Richard Dennis has four bedrooms and three baths on the second floor alone.

The master bedroom comes with his-and-her walk-in closets and a large bathroom with a long tub in front of a large window - suitable for lounging in a warm bubble bath. The other bedrooms are roomy, too - one measures 18 by 21 feet, the other two roughly 13 feet square - and two come with full baths.

A grand family room on the first floor has a two-story cathedral ceiling. And no need to go to the basement for laundry - there's a washer and dryer right on the second floor. In addition to at least five security cameras, the property has two motion sensors and banks of floodlights.

17 busted for mortgage scheme

From NY1:

Law enforcement authorities have arrested more than a dozen people in connection with a multi-million dollar mortgage rescue fraud in Queens, the district attorney announced from Kew Gardens this afternoon.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown says 26 refinanced residential properties worth about $13 million were stripped over more than $3 million in equities.

Brown said 17 people have been charged, including two attorneys who were allegedly involved in the scheme. They face charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

"The defendants are charged with creating a human tragedy of immense proportions for the homeowners, most of whom are members of Queens' Guyanese community, who had turned to them in desperate need of saving their home from foreclosure," said the district attorney."

The charges allege Roger Huggins and Inderpaul Sookraj were the ringleaders, operating a Richmond Hill firm which claimed to be a home foreclosure rescue company.

Victims included not only the homeowners but also mortgage lenders like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Met Life and Countrywide.

In one case, Huggins and Sookraj are accused of filing fraudulent documents which said they purchased a Jamaica, Queens home from a woman who had died a year earlier. They later flipped the property at an inflated price and kept the entire loan proceeds.

House flippers charged with grand larceny

From WPIX:

Seven people, including a lawyer and three mortgage brokers, are facing an 82-count indictment on charges they bought and sold the same Bedford-Stuyvesant home on four separate occasions over a span of four years by stealing a woman's identity and securing four mortgages worth $2 million, the Queens District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday.

The suspects, identified as Ralph Pecorale, Thomas Debonis, Leonard Sudler, Richard Sudler, Marco Ramos, Sophia Welsh and Yves Mathieu, are accused of buying and selling a home located at 698A on DeKalb Ave. as many as four times, between 2005 and 2009.

According to the Queens District Attorney's Office, the group initially purchased the building, which was apparently vacant for the past 35 years, in 2005, using a straw buyer, whom they helped get a loan using false information.

The purchase was for $600,000 and the mortgage was for $544,000, the indictment said. In addition, the indictment charges in 2006 the ring arranged for the building to be sold to a different straw buyer, for $715,000.

With two mortgages equaling the full sale price, the defendants were reportedly able to pay off the first mortgage and rake in $102,000.

Eventually, the suspects stopped making mortgage payments, and in 2007 the house went into foreclosure. However, the indictment charges that on Feb. 14, 2008, the group settled the debt with the bank.

In addition, they allegedly sold the property to another straw buyer that same day -- this one apparently using a stolen identity -- who had obtained a $675,000 mortgage. As a result, the suspects made a tidy profit of $151,00 in a single day.

The Brooklyn's District Attorney's Office launched an investigation into the case when the mortgage defaulted on the home in 2009, and the suspects were negotiating with another bank for another false sale.

Ratner misses mortgage payment

From Crain's:

In another sign of distress in the city's real estate market, Forest City Ratner failed to make mortgage payment on 10 Metro Tech Center, part of its huge office complex in downtown Brooklyn [which, by the way, has a partial stop work order]. As a result that loan was placed on a watch list, Trepp [which tracks real estate debt] said.

The Forest City news is somewhat surprising because it has not been a fixture on such lists.

Tsk, tsk. And this was looking so promising for Brucie a few years back.

So...how will Ratner build his Atlantic Yards project if he can't afford to pay the mortgage on a building he's owned for more than 2 decades?

Club Kalua owners busted for mortgage fraud

From the Daily News:

Queens prosecutors say Martina Duran, 57, and Roger Arias, 36, used identities stolen from the dead and the elderly to buy and sell three properties.

One victim was an elderly woman from the Dominican Republic who had never set foot on U.S. soil, prosecutors say.

Duran pocketed $250,000 from the July 2006 sale of a $500,000 South Ozone Park home, prosecutors said.

Duran and Arias were each being held in lieu of $250,000 bond following arraignment.

Duran boasted to investigators that she had more than $1 million in assets in the Dominican Republic and needed armed guards to escort her throughout the country.

She and her son owned the defunct Club Kalua, where Bell was fatally shot in 2006 by cops probing reports of prostitution.

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