Brooklyn DA's Real Estate Crime Unit Pinches 18 Suspects In Various Realty-Related Rackets

In Brooklyn, New York, the New York Post reports:

• Real-estate crime is so prevalent in Brooklyn, even a former city councilman was duped, the Brooklyn district attorney said yesterday. The Mortgage Fraud and Real Estate Crimes Unit has recently locked up 18 people on a variety of scams including reverse mortgage schemes that prey on the elderly and loan-modification swindles like the one that duped former Councilman Kendall Stewart, DA Charles Hynes said.
• In three loan-modification cases, including Stewart's, scammers posing as financial-services specialists solicited up-front fees -- which are prohibited -- to process loan modifications to stave off foreclosures.
• In one brazen case of attempted fraud, Hynes said, a man named Ralph Baker "had the gall, or, as we say in Brooklyn, the chutzpah" to pester the DA's office to help recover a $1.7 million brownstone that he claimed had been stolen from him. The only problem was that the home belonged to a different Ralph Baker, Hynes said.
• The unit was set up two years ago after Sen. Charles Schumer, who was at yesterday's announcement, arranged an $875,000 federal grant, Hynes said.

Source: Brooklyn is scamville.