Guest post by Joel Gilbert
Over the past six weeks, I have detailed the evidence of mortgage fraud by New York Attorney General Letitia James in my series “The Letitia Files” on The Gateway Pundit.
Meanwhile, forensic accountant Sam Antar has published damning mortgage fraud information in regard to Letitia James on his website, whitecollarfraud.com.
Our research appeared in the referral on James by Bill Pulte, Director of the United States Federal Housing Finance Agency. The case has been sent to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. James has since hired Democrat attorney Abbie Lowell.
This past week, Sam and I decided to visit the “crime scene,” the apartment building owned by James since 2001 at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. Sam and I set out to document two central issues: the number of apartment units and the number of floors in James’s building.
Watch this video with Joel Gilbert and Sam Antar – the two leading investigators in the Letitia Files.
In obtaining loans and refinancing for her building, James has consistently claimed only four apartment units. This claim contrasts with the official Certificate of Occupancy (CoO), which states it is a five-unit building.
There is an advantage to lying about the number of units. Four-unit apartment buildings qualify for lower residential mortgage and insurance rates, while buildings with five or more apartments are given higher commercial rates.
In New York City, property owners are legally required to register all details of their residential buildings each year with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). On Letitia James’s registration page of her apartment building, she has consistently listed her apartment building as having only three stories.
There is an incentive for James to lie. Falsely registering a building with HPD as having three stories instead of four stories, and four apartment units instead of five, offers a property owner potential financial and regulatory advantages.
One advantage is avoiding the stricter legal and safety requirements that apply to larger buildings. In New York City, once a residential building reaches four stories, or five units, it can become subject to additional regulations under the Housing Maintenance Code, Building Code, and sometimes the Multiple Dwelling Law.
These regulations could include mandates to create fire escapes, add sprinklers, install accessibility upgrades under ADA guidelines, require more frequent inspections by HPD, or even require elevator installations, depending on the building’s size and configuration. In addition to the regulatory burdens, the larger size might lead to higher insurance premiums.
Complying with these requirements can involve significant financial investment, another powerful incentive for a building owner to understate the building’s specifications.
On our visit to 296 Lafayette Avenue, Antar and I sought to document the number of units in the building and the number of floors. The first thing we did was walk up the steps to the elevated first floor of the building.
Just outside the main entrance were doorbells for four units, labeled “1 floor,” “2 Floor,” “3A” and “3B” – four separate apartment units beginning at the elevated first floor.
The entire first and second floors were single apartments, while the third floor was split into two apartments, exactly as indicated on the official Certificate of Occupancy.
On the CoO, there is an additional apartment unit on the ground floor, listed as “basement.” We looked at the ground level, and sure enough the basement apartment had a separate entrance with its own doorbell.
This made for five total apartment units as listed on the CoO, and not four as James has claimed in her many mortgage applications.
The next issue we sought to verify whether the building had four stories or three stories as James has maintained in her annual HPD registrations.
In New York City, a building with a basement apartment and three additional floors above it is considered a four-story building for the purposes of HPD registration.
To qualify as “a story” a basement unit must have at least half of its height above the ground level.
If the building’s lowest level meets the definition of a basement, especially if used as an apartment, it must be counted as a story. Misclassifying a basement unit to understate the number of stories is a registration violation and can lead to potential penalties.
I measured the height from the sidewalk to the top of the floor of the basement apartment at 87 inches or 7 1/4 feet. Then I measured the distance from the sidewalk level to the bottom of the single step that led to the door of the basement apartment at only 16 inches, or 1 1/3 feet.
In sum, the ground floor “basement” apartment was roughly 82 percent above ground, unmistakably more than the 50 percent above ground needed to qualify as a “story.”
In fact, the Certificate of Occupancy for James’s building lists a “cellar” as well, under the “basement” unit, further indicating that James’s basement apartment unit is a “story” and cannot possibly be considered a cellar.
This visit gave us the photographic evidence needed to prove Letitia James has lied consistently over the years about the number of units and the number of stories in her apartment building.
In doing so, she appears to have defrauded mortgage companies, insurance companies, tax authorities, and the city of New York. As James has told us repeatedly in her harassment of Donald Trump on mortgage fraud related charges, “No one is above the law.” Hypocrisy may not be a crime – if it were, James would get the chair – but mortgage fraud most certainly is.
As someone who breaks the law, Attorney General Leticia James can no longer uphold the law. Her immediate resignation is in order.
Joel Gilbert, is a Los Angeles-based film producer, and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.
The post BIG NEWS by Joel Gilbert on the Letita Files: My Visit to Letitia James’s Apartment Building CONFIRMS Mortgage Fraud Allegations (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.