18 Indicted for Alleged Mortgage, Deed Fraud Scheme

Eighteen people have been indicted in Manhattan in relation to alleged deed theft and mortgage fraud, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Thursday.

The alleged scheme involved stealing the deed to a Manhattan brownstone through identity theft, artificially inflating the value of the property and cashing out via a mortgage.

Nationally, law enforcement agencies have been increasingly bringing cases on alleged mortgage fraud, often involving schemes to inflate property values or take out mortgages on third-party properties. New York prosecutors are focusing on these schemes and hoping to root out further offenders, with the district attorney accusing more than a dozen people this week of taking part in just one scheme.

“We have forgeries and falsified documents,” Bragg said at a press conference Thursday. “And as you can see from the fact that they were able to get a mortgage, it worked.”

Bragg’s office accused defendants of conspiring to steal the deed to a residential brownstone on West 131st Street in Manhattan. The owner of the property died in 2018. Years later, using falsified documents, including birth certificates and UCC liens, defendants posed as heirs to the property.

In April 2024, defendant Angela Ramos, claiming to be an heir to the property, allegedly sold the building to Yuan Kuei “Mike” Li, who posed as a straw buyer. Li purchased the property for $950,000, but then sold the property again to Great Neck Acquisitions, owned by defendant Abdur Rahman, for about $1.5 million. Prosecutors said no money actually changed hands in the transaction.

The defendants then used the property as collateral to get a mortgage and construction loan totaling more than $1.6 million. The district attorney’s office declined to name the bank that originated the mortgage.

Defense attorneys for Ramos, Li and Rahman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The three were indicted in October and each pleaded not guilty.

This week, the district attorney arraigned 15 more defendants associated with the case, accused of falsifying documents and taking part in the scheme.

“There’s an entire, we allege, ecosystem,” Bragg said. “You have people who procure the identities, you have lawyers, you have real estate brokers.”

In other cities, prosecutors and news outlets have brought attention to alleged multifamily mortgage fraud schemes. Alleged perpetrators typically inflate expected rents or sell properties at inflated prices to straw buyers to obtain outsized mortgages.

Deed theft, where scammers fraudulently or covertly transfer ownership of a home without the true owners’ knowledge, has captured significant attention in New York this year. Brooklyn politicians, including Council member Chi Ossé and Borough President Antonio Reynoso, have spoken out about the scams through prevention workshops and protests. Last month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched his Office of Deed Theft Prevention. Victims are typically discussed as aging Black homeowners.

Bragg said he had personally seen scammers try to take his parents’ Harlem brownstone, especially as his mother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Although deed fraud is typically thought of as an issue affecting Brooklyn or Queens, which have more single-family brownstone stock, there are also cases in Manhattan, Bragg said.

“This is pernicious fraud, people preying on our most vulnerable population,” he said.