
United Homes head Yaron Hershco and 557 Hancock Street (building source: PropertyShark)[Updated 4:18 p.m.] A group of eight African-American homeowners were awarded a total of more than $1 million last
week, after a nine-member jury found that Yaron Hershco’s United Homes committed fraud — yet
cleared him of discrimination — in a wide-ranging property flipping scheme in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
Bushwick and other Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Hershco, a developer of single-family homes and luxury condominium buildings, had been accused in
the federal district court complaint of luring first-time homebuyers to a so-called one-stop shop, where
appraisers, lenders, lawyers and other officials conspired to sell them homes at over-inflated prices until the buyers were on the brink of foreclosure.
The jury decided that the participants in the scheme, including Hershco, United Homes, Allied
Mortgage Banking, Olympia Mortgage and attorney Benjamin Turner must pay punitive damages to the plaintiffs. [more]