Samuel Newhouse, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
JAY STREET — Real estate fraudsters and rogue attorneys exploiting “a new breed of crime” were targeted Thursday by Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes at a press conference announcing several recent mortgage fraud cases in Brooklyn.
Hynes’ office has indicted 12 people for real estate crimes allegedly committed over the past several years, and as Hynes pointed out, several of the white-collar fraudsters were attorneys or otherwise close to the court system.
“One was an attorney, one was a resigned attorney, one was a suspended attorney,” Hynes said, outlining the various suspects. “Ordinarily you’d say get a lawyer — now we say get an honest lawyer.”
All together, a staggering total of $2.6 million was stolen in these various, unrelated scams, in many of which power of attorney was forged or fraudulently obtained by the alleged scammers.
In one case, attorney Alan Rocoff is accused of blatantly stealing profits from the auction of a foreclosed church that he was handling as court-appointed referee.
Before dying in 2008, Pastor Robert Booker Sr. spent years in court trying to get back $218,000 in profits from the sale of the foreclosed church, which Rocoff auctioned off for $300,000 in 2005. His children were “jubilant” Thursday that justice has finally caught up. Read more here:
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=4&id=33374
