Sanford Solny, a real estate investor, was found guilty on Thursday of stealing the deeds to 11 properties across Brooklyn, in a case that has put a spotlight on schemes to defraud financially fragile homeowners out of their properties.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Solny, 68, targeted struggling homeowners who were on the brink of foreclosure and told them that they were eligible for a short sale — a transaction where the bank agrees to accept less than what is owed on the mortgage. Thinking they were walking away from debt, the unsuspecting homeowners — who were overwhelmingly Black or Latino — were instead signing away ownership to one of Mr. Solny’s many LLCs, while the crushing debt remained in their names.
Justice Danny Chun of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn found Mr. Solny guilty of 13 counts, including criminal possession, grand larceny and scheme to defraud, after a bench trial that began in December. At the same time, the judge did not find him guilty of the more serious degrees of the charges. Mr. Solny and his various LLCs had faced a total of 74 counts.
Mr. Solny, a former lawyer who was disbarred in 2023, faces three-and-a-half to seven years in prison for the most serious charge and less time for the others. But the judge indicated that he did not plan to sentence him to consecutive sentences, meaning that the longest Mr. Solny is likely to spend in prison is seven years. He will remain free until his sentencing in the fall, the judge ruled.
Prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that Mr. Solny is a flight risk, because he could cash out any of the dozens of other homes he owns — a total of 240 properties — to fund his escape. If he fails to show up for his sentencing, the judge warned, Mr. Solny could serve his sentences consecutively, effectively a life sentence.
For the families whose lives were upended by the theft of their homes, the conviction represented a decade-long battle — and was too little too late.
“You’re a criminal!” a woman screamed at the bespectacled Mr. Solny, as he and his family were escorted by security into the elevator at the Brooklyn courthouse on Thursday.
This was the second time Mr. Solny was prosecuted for so-called deed theft.
In 2016, Mr. Solny and his associates were charged in Queens with crimes related to the theft of 10 homes. He pleaded guilty two years later to a lesser charge of criminal possession of stolen property and was sentenced to up to five years of probation. By 2023, he had been disbarred.
Though he stopped working as a lawyer, he continued his real estate investments, and the most recent charges came after The New York Times revealed that Mr. Solny had used a network of shell companies to acquire ownership of more properties, offering the homeowners a one-time payout, ranging from as low as $350 to $10,000.
Some of the homeowners were further misled, told that the bank demanded they move out as a condition for approving the short sale, according to the indictment. At three of the properties, Mr. Solny pocketed nearly $64,000 in rent, either from tenants he placed there himself or else from those already living on-site, according to prosecutors.
From the back of the courtroom on Thursday, Patrice Sawadogo, 59, watched quietly. Originally from Burkina Faso, Mr. Sawadogo, a truck driver, said that he had managed to buy two buildings in Brooklyn in 2003 and 2006, including a three-unit building in East Flatbush.
He recalled how he fell behind on his mortgage in 2007, and in 2012, believing he was digging himself out of debt, he signed a document in Mr. Solny’s office.
“He made me sign a paper. And then he told me that I had to wait — that it could take the bank a year or so to do the short sale,” he said in French.
The short sale never happened, he said, and Mr. Solny then attempted to gain possession of Mr. Sawadogo’s house. To fend off the dual threats — the pending foreclosure as well as the deed theft — Mr. Sawadogo said that he was forced to file for bankruptcy.
Two of Mr. Sawadogo’s homes were among the 11 stolen properties that prosecutors outlined in the trial. He shook his head as he described the impact of a legal fight that has dragged on for more than a decade: “A depression I cannot begin to describe,” he said.
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said Justice Chun announced that he will sign an order nullifying the 11 fraudulent deeds, which will revert ownership back to the victims. The rescission will mean little to other homeowners who claim that Mr. Solny also tricked them into signing over ownership of their properties, but whose properties were not part of the charges. A number of civil suits related to the properties are ongoing.
On Thursday, several people who say they were duped by other real estate investors showed up in solidarity and to hear the judge’s verdict.
Rachel Cyprien, who is Black, said she is a victim of deed theft and is fighting to get her title back in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn. She described the wave of deed theft, which is disproportionately affecting Black homeowners in New York’s gentrifying neighborhoods as “Tulsa in Brooklyn,” a reference to the 1921 massacre in which a white mob razed a prosperous Black community and then seized its property.
She waited by the elevator to come face to face with Mr. Solny. As a security guard shielded Mr. Solny and the elevator closed, Ms. Cyprien shouted, “You’re living off our blood!”
Sheelagh McNeilland Susan C. Beachycontributed research.
Rukmini Callimachi is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Before joining The Times in 2014, she spent seven years as a correspondent and bureau chief reporting from Africa for The Associated Press.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
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