bed-stuy-flip-042110.jpgAs both The Post and NY1 reported this morning, seven people have been charged in a house-flipping scheme that also involved identity theft. The ring was exposed when a woman complained to the District Attorney’s office after her credit rating took a hit when she failed to make mortgage payments on a $675,000 loan in her name on a house in Bed Stuy. It turns out that the same group of people had flipped the same house four times in four years, sucking out $2 million in the process. “It’s very much like someone who’s the victim of a random mugging,” said Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes. Neither report gave an address of the house in question.


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  1. The foundation of the Mutant Asset Bubble is coming apart! Fraud was the foundation of your “Net Worth” and now the Wormhole is collapsing again!

    Question: What will happen when we go back to 28/35 and 20% down?

    Answer: A Nuclear Explosion

    It’s been fun, not!

    The What

    Someday this war is gonna end..

  2. Legal transaction, title clear, initial purchase…you can get insurance to protect a subsequent illegal conveyance. Don’t make this more complicated than what I’m describing.

    99.9% of all transactions are above board, legal and could purchase this at closing. You are assuming shit has already started.

  3. dave,

    Presumably the real seller in the first transaciton got paid, albeit with funds improperly obtained by the fraudulent buyer. Are you saying the original seller gets stuck with the property and has to give up the money?

    The problem I see here is with a fraudulent buyer. Fraudster pretends to be someone else and buys in that person’s name. That person doesn’t know about the transaction, and isn’t present at the closing to buy the insurance and may not own any property agt all. So the insurance would protect agaisnt the use of the seller’s ID to fraudulently transfer the property, it doesn’t help when it is the buyer’s ID that is being used fraudulently.

  4. Book ’em, convict them, and send them to prison.

    They are a scourge on our communities. They artificially over-inflate housing costs, making it next to impossible for ordinary middle class people to buy in even lower income communities, and their first cousins, the predatory loan makers, are responsible for a lot of the foreclosures in central Brooklyn and in the Bronx and Queens. Crown Heightster is right.

  5. DIBS,

    You can’t really purchase insurance at closing for this because you are not at the closing. Someone has stolen your identity and is closing in your name in your absence.

    CH — Great post. You calling out Levy? How much has Levy taken in campaign funds from this guy?

  6. Want to learn more about some of the many predatory lending schemes common in NYC’s lower-income communities? And better alternatives?

    Habitat for Humanity – New York City’s Loan Rangers program offers free workshops to community groups in Bed-Stuy and citywide.

    Our volunteer Loan Rangers will come to your organization to provide expertise, information, materials and answers to your constituents — so they can keep their hard-earned money in their own pockets!

    Info @ http://www.habitatnyc.org. Click on the Advocate button.

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