Crown Heights, NY – A Brooklyn developer who federal prosecutors say took condo buyers and banks for more than $18 million in an elaborate mortgage scam was indicted Wednesday on bank fraud charges.
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The case against Eliyahu Ezagui, 48, who feds say preyed on his fellow Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights, stems from a Daily News investigation last year. Ezagui enticed scores of families into buying the homes but never turned over the deeds, according to the indictment.
“The defendant engaged in fraud to steal money from innocent homebuyers and financial institutions,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.
Preconstruction prices ranged from $90,000 to $160,000 per unit at two locations, 770 Lefferts Ave. and 613 East New York Ave., according to the indictment and The News’ probe.
Ezagui told buyers, nearly all with young children, that the projects had the blessing of community religious leaders. Instead of giving buyers deeds when construction was completed, he kept them for himself, his father, his mother, his wife and two business associates.
Then, Ezagui took out more than $18 million in mortgages on apartments already purchased and occupied by the buyers and their families, according to the indictment. He pocketed the money, paid the mortgages for a time, then stopped and fled to Israel after The News broke the story, according to authorities.
Feds were waiting with an arrest warrant when Ezagui flew back and landed at JFK Airport July 13, 2008.
Many of the families are facing foreclosure on their apartments. Mortgage lenders including JPMorgan Chase, the Bank of New York, Sovereign Bank and HSBC, along with the condominium owners, have losses of about $18 million.
Last year, Ezagui said he took out the mortgages to pay off construction loans and other debt on the project and maintained that he is bankrupt. He is free on $3 million bail, but he’s confined to his home and is wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.
His lawyer, John Meringolo, predicted Ezagui will prevail against the criminal charges.
“We feel the allegations in the indictment barely rise to the level of a civil case let alone a federal indictment,” Meringolo said.
I never understood why the families never demanded the deeds.
Am I the only one that sees a pattern how the gov. Is lately targeting yiddin?
its really sad, we thought he was giving us houses, now you have many frum yidden with many children without a place to live…..H-shem yeracham
There were posters put about this guy in Miami years ago… How did NY not know about this lowlife?
didnt any of the yidden have a lawyer who would have asked for the deed and recorded it?….they probably saved a few shekel.
sheep for the sheering.
Here is a little known factoid. Eli Ezagui was given every opportunitty by his victims lawyers to sit down and try and work it out. Instead he laughed at them and gave them “bubbe mainses” and didn’t show up for meetings when everyone was sitting around a table waiting for him because he didn’t think they could make a case against him. It’s horrible that it had to come to this, but some people just don’t understand any other way.
He was living the high life in Aventura something like a Madoff.
Wrap his ponytail around his neck and throw him in the mikveh. A menivil sheloi birshis hatoyre.
I don’t understand I’d someone steals my deed and borrows money in my name and forges signatures or writes ublawfully my deed over to others. why am I shildig and not the bank or lender. what right do they have to my house. they shudn’t have lent and it and they got scammed. I don’t understand can someone explain what I’m missing?
He didnt steal for the intention of stealing, he messed up n he fell into a financial black hole, but iyh he will be reimbrssing the family’s!
Come on everyone here…Its wake up time…If you live your life by stealing from other people you GO to JAIL……
The Chofetz Chaim builds our obligations in judgment on the halachic concept of chazokoh, loosely translated as the status quo. The righteous Torah scholar can be assumed to always be doing only what is right. It is therefore only fair to judge him that way. Even if he did something that appears to be blatantly wrong, he deserves to retain his status quo of piety. In fact, his commitment to Torah observance is so strong that we can be sure that he immediately rectified any wrong he had done.
The ordinary individual does not operate on that high plane and can at times fall into sinful practice. Yet, his general interest is to fulfill Hashem’s will, and he therefore deserves the status quo of trying to do what is right. However, since he does fail at times, one is not obligated to ignore the apparent wrongdoing and may doubt its appropriateness. Nonetheless, he also retains a status quo of basic good behavior and may not be judged unfavorably.
Kol Yisrael Yesh Lahem Chelek L’Olam Haba, Shenemar V’Amech Kulam Tzadikim…
If most of these buyers paid a sum as a down payment and did not make further payments since they did not have mortgages, they did not lose much money. Their original down payment served as rent money for years of living there with no further payments. Therefore, they were not severely damaged if this is the case. The question is what did the ganev do with all the money from the downpayments and the mortgages? He was rolling in cash.
I am in no way trying to condone or justify the defendants actions. If the allegations are indeed true then he should be held responsible for all the harm he caused. However, I wanted to shed light on what happens in alot of these money/real estate deals gone bad. Basically, developers always need more and more capital to keep on building more and more projects. sometimes projects are built and it can be years before profit is made. When the deed is kept by the developer, its so that he can use it to borrow more and move on to the next project, and then the next one.The developer’s conscience tells him that when everything pans out and the buildings produce revenue he will have the money to pay back the mortgages and nobody will even know. they dont even consider failure as an option, since they are so blinded by the money.. then some buildings dont go so much to plan and everything starts to fall like dominoes for them, since the financing for building “b” was ill gotten from the deeds that belonged to others of building “a” . essentially the devloper is using the buyers from building a , as investors. so when the next project fails then they are essentialy investors who just lost their money in a real estate project if u look at it that way. I do not believe in stating so called facts about news stories when we really dont even know the whole story. we think we know b/c we heard from a friend of a friend’s neighbor.. I
You guys have it all wrong, but are so busy loving the trouble of other Jews, that you don’t care.
Mr. E. never stole money from anyone, as a matter of fact, all of his “victims” have either been living in, or renting out, the apartments that they purchased from him. When he heard that there were charges pending, he got a plane from Israel, on his own, in order to deal with this matter, which is civil at best.
His buyers did pay a certain ammount of money up front, with more due upon completion, only a select few of his buyers did this action, because most relaized that he is temimis yid, who sadly got in over his head.
A few of his investors went to many lawyers, all who said they have no case, and finally they found a, guess, yup, a “frum” lawyer, who decided that they will trump this into a criminla case, without any heter bes din, (the crown heights bes din has no right to be involved, since the av bes dins son is one of the buyers), and did a pure messira, and to the poster who said this isnt messirah, you might as well stop keeping shabbos and kosher, because if the torah changes, then change more then just one halacha.
I wish him hatzlacha, and I hope that the people that were gullty of making this worse that it was, have their judgement as well, by the higher courts.