BY ROSE ADAMS
Cops cuffed a Coney Island
man on Tuesday for allegedly
taking $74,000 from
women who hoped to scam
their way into a coveted affordable
housing complex —
only to keep the money and
never follow through on his
end of the bargain.
The three victims allegedly
paid the 63-year-old defendant,
who promised that
he could help them skip the
decades-long waitlist for the
Mitchell-Lama apartments
and buy the discounted units
— but the suspect, a resident
of the housing compound himself,
had no connection to the
complex’s management or control
over the waitlist, the District
Attorney’s offi ce said.
Gonzalez blasted the accused
scammer after he was
arraigned before Brooklyn
Supreme Court Justice
Danny Chun on a host of
fraud-related charges, saying
affordable housing processes
must be protected from extortion.
“We will not allow opportunists
and scammers to corrupt
the process by which
eligible prospective tenants
gain access to reasonably
priced housing,” he said.
The defendant, who lives
in the Amalgamated Warbasse
COURIER L 18 IFE, FEBRUARY 21-27, 2020
Houses on W. Fifth
Street, allegedly met one of
the victims through a mutual
friend sometime between October
2015 and March 2016,
according to the investigation.
The man later told the victim
and two of her friends
that he could help each of
them buy apartments in the
complex if they paid him
$15,000 each, the complaint
alleges.
After receiving the payments,
the defendant allegedly
requested more cash
from two of the victims —
and reportedly received
$25,000 from one victim and
$4,000 from the other.
The defendant said the
apartments would become
available between six and 12
months, but never followed
up on the promise and refused
to return the cash, according
to Gonzalez.
This is just the most recent
in a long series of scandals
that have plagued the
coveted housing complex,
however.
In June, police busted
three offi cials with the Luna
Park Housing Cooperative —
the body that manages the
housing development — for
allegedly helping applicants
forge documents to obtain
the affordable apartments
in exchange for $874,000 in
bribes.
Four months after that, cops
cuffed three other Coney Islanders
for forging documents
to prove they were related to
the units’ previous owners, allowing
them to illegally “inherit”
the apartments.
A grand jury indicted the
most recently accused Mitchell
Lama-connected scammer
on ten counts of grand
larceny, and one count of
fi rst-degree scheme to defraud.
He was released without
bail, and ordered to return
to court in March.
Authorities arrested a man for alleged taking money from women who
hoped to bypass the waitlist for affordable Mitchell-Lama apartments.
Google
Mitchell-Lama drama
Man cuffed for allegedly taking bribes in Coney housing scheme
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