Brooklyn actual property investor Sanford Solny is headed to jail for a years-long deed theft scheme that stripped householders — a lot of them immigrants and other people of colour — of their properties.
Solny, 68, was sentenced Wednesday to as much as seven years behind bars after being convicted in June on 17 counts, together with grand larceny, scheme to defraud and legal possession of stolen property, the New York Instances reported. The ruling caps a case that grew to become a flashpoint for New York’s rising battle in opposition to deed theft, a type of property fraud.
Brooklyn Supreme Court docket Justice Danny Chun ordered that 11 stolen deeds be nullified, probably permitting victims to reclaim properties. However Chun stopped wanting granting restitution, that means Solny received’t need to return the roughly $500,000 in lease he collected after evicting homeowners and putting in tenants.
Solny, a disbarred lawyer from Midwood, pitched struggling householders on “quick gross sales,” promising to barter with banks to wipe away debt. As a substitute, prosecutors mentioned, he transferred the deeds to himself or shell corporations whereas leaving mortgages and tax obligations within the authentic homeowners’ names. Victims testified that the scams left them homeless, financially ruined and combating for greater than a decade to undo fraudulent transfers.
Outdoors the courtroom, there was a standoff between Solny’s supporters and supporters of the victims. Contained in the courtroom, victims described the lengthy toll of the fraud.
“Due to Sanford Solny, I misplaced my house. I misplaced all my furnishings and I misplaced all of the work that I put into my house,” Janet Bruce, who emigrated from Guyana and acquired her Flatbush house in 2006 earlier than shedding it in 2014, wrote in an announcement to the court docket.
The sentencing adopted a previous conviction in Queens in 2018 for comparable crimes, when Solny obtained 5 years’ probation. Final month, Solny was remanded to custody throughout a listening to in Queens after allegedly violating his probation. The transfer seemingly got here as a shock to Solny, because it was on the eve of Yom Kippur and he didn’t have his medication on him.
Prosecutors famous that at the very least certainly one of his Brooklyn thefts occurred after that earlier sentence, an indication he saved the grift going even whereas underneath court docket supervision.
Deed theft is difficult to prosecute, as intent must be proven and victims usually signal legally-binding paperwork, permitting perpetrators to border schemes as authorized enterprise offers.
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