A 68-year-old Brooklyn investor has been sentenced to a maximum of seven years in prison for deed fraud.
The investor, Sanford Solny, targeted 11 homeowners who’d fallen behind on their mortgage payments and were at risk of foreclosure. Solny told the homeowners, many of whom were Black, Latino or recent immigrants, that he would negotiate their debts with the banks and settle for less than what was owed through a so-called short sale.
Solny gave the owners a small payment after the alleged negotiations were done, leading them to believe their debts were cleared and they could retain ownership of their homes.
However, what Solny did was take the homeowners’ deeds and have them transferred to his or one of his companies, giving him the right to evict the homeowners, although they were still responsible for mortgage payments and property taxes. After evicting the homeowners, Solny rented the properties — earning more than $500,000 over the course of 12 years.
“My new home meant everything to me,” Janet Bruce, one of the homeowners, said in a statement before Solny’s sentencing on Wednesday.
Bruce, a Guyanese immigrant and home health aide, purchased a three-bedroom Flatbush home in 2006. Bruce made on-time payments until 2013, when her husband suffered a stroke and couldn’t work. She was connected with Solny, a then-lawyer, who said he could help her keep her home. Instead, Solny evicted the Bruces and rented out their home, earning approximately $270,000, according to The New York Times.
“I bought new kitchen cabinets, got electrical and plumbing work done and purchased all new furniture,” she told NYT. “My neighbors respected me because my home was the neatest one on the block. Because of Sanford Solny, I lost my home. I lost all my furniture, and I lost all the work that I put into my home.”
Solny maintained his innocence throughout the hearing, despite a five-year probation sentence he received in 2018 for deed fraud in Queens.
In his final statement, Solny’s lawyer, James Kousouros, argued the 11 homeowners weren’t “hapless victims” who lacked understanding of the transaction.
“This is just not a situation in which hapless victims had their deeds stolen from them under their noses — it just isn’t,” Kousouros said. “The purported victims in this case not only sold their deed on paper, in the open, and received money after draining the properties for every nickel they could after not paying mortgages for years.”
However, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sided with the victims and ordered the deed transfers to be nullified, giving homeowners the opportunity to reclaim their homes. The homeowners were denied financial restitution, which included any portion of rent that Solny collected after illegally evicting them.
“He didn’t even say he was sorry,” homeowner Clotilde Wendpagnangde Sawadogo said in a victim statement.
Deed fraud on the rise nationwide
Deed fraud has been on the rise, prompting multiple local Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) divisions to issue warnings.
In April, the FBI’s Boston Division alerted homeowners and real estate agents to a concerning uptick in quit-claim deed fraud, where criminals file forged transfer of property ownership documents using public information about homeowners and their properties. They then sell the land or home, rent it out or take out a mortgage, forcing homeowners to reclaim their property rights through a lengthy court process.
“Folks across the region are having their roots literally pulled out from under them and are being left with no place to call home. They’re suffering deeply personal losses that have inflicted a significant financial and emotional toll, including shock, anger, and even embarrassment,” FBI Boston Division Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen said in a public statement. “We are urging the public to heed this warning and to take proactive steps to avoid losing [their] property.”
“Anyone who is a victim of this type of fraud should report it to us,” she added.
Several state legislatures are taking steps to protect homeowners from deed fraud, with Texas enacting Senate Bill 16, which requires photo ID for quit-claim deed filings and more stringent notary rules. The bill also requires county clerks to report suspicious documents.
“Here in Dallas, what we have said is no more,” State Rep. Rafael Anchia told FOX 4. “This is an expression of our values, it’s an expression of our values that we, as a community, we are going to take care of the people and their most important assets, and we’re going to take care of people who are most vulnerable, namely our seniors.”
