Former Bushwick HQ Of Black Supremacist Cult For Sale for $15M

Selling any property can be difficult in this environment. But the development site at 717 Bushwick Avenue has some … complications.

These include a questionable chain of ownership that leads to the Nuwaubian Nation, a Black supremacist cult according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among other beliefs, the group worships UFOs and is led by a controversial figure who believes he is an extraterrestrial being from the galaxy Illyuwn. (Property records from Illyuwn were not immediately available.)

But wait, there’s more. The cult leader, Dwight York, has been in prison since 2002, convicted of child sexual abuse and financial crimes and sentenced to 135 years.

Now his daughter – one of “many” children fathered by York – says she and her siblings have a right to an interest in the property and any rent collected by the owners.

In a lawsuit filed on Nov. 7, the daughter, Ummkhayr Abdula Muhammad Mabry, is trying to stop the sale by suing the current owner of the Brooklyn building, Holy Trinity Seed Ministries of Nuwaup, a religious organization that appears to be a spinoff of York’s cult. She’s also suing two previous owners, alleging the deed may have been fraudulently transferred.

York — under the alias Isa Muhammad — bought the Bushwick property in 1977. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, York led the Bushwick mosque, where his followers sometimes wore long white robes and guarded the building with shotguns, according to the New York Times.

York signed over the deed in 2002 to a corporation in Georgia, where the Nuwaubians moved in the 1990s and built a 438-acre compound. But the signature on the deed may not be her father’s, Mabry alleges in the lawsuit, because he was in prison when it was signed.

After the Georgia corporation was dissolved, the property was signed over to Bushwick resident Patricia Lewis. She then transferred ownership back to the Nuwaubians, who still use the temple as a gathering place. It is being marketed with the adjacent three-story, mixed-use building at 719 Bushwick Avenue owned by the same religious group. The properties have a combined 14,000 buildable square feet, said Ron Spurga, who is marketing the site for $15 million.

The relationship between Spurga, an account executive at a heating oil company, and the owner is unclear. No working phone numbers could be found for Mabry or the lawyer who filed the lawsuit, Brian K. Robinson.

Reached by phone, Lewis said: “I got nothing to say about that.”