Nassau DA: B'klyn Man Used Bogus Mtg. Satisfactions & Title Policy, Prepared His Own Title Report, Forged Dead Lawyer's Name To Pocket $5.3M In Loans

From the Office of the Nassau County, New York District Attorney:

• Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced [] that a Brooklyn man has pleaded guilty to obtaining $5.3 million in mortgages from two different Nassau County financial lenders by using fake documents, a dead attorney’s signature and forged mortgage satisfactions that showed previous mortgages were paid off.

• Mayer Goldberger, 46, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, pleaded guilty to two counts of Grand Larceny in the First Degree. He faces up to 25 years in prison on each conviction at his March 9 sentencing and agreed to repay his victims the maximum amount of approximately $5.3 million, which will be by civil judgment.

• Rice said that in 2002 and 2003, Goldberger obtained loans on properties located in Hartford, Connecticut from lenders in New York totaling $1.4 million. Goldberger owned these properties under his company’s name, Hartford LLC. In 2005 and 2006, forged documents were filed stating the $1.4 million had been paid off.

• Goldberger then used those forged documents to obtain a $3 million loan from the New York Community Bank in Jericho in 2007. In reality, Goldberger still owed the entire original $1.4 million.

• Using the same forged mortgage satisfactions he used in 2006 to obtain the New York Community bank loan, Goldberger received another loan for $2.3 million from BRT Realty Trust in Great Neck in 2008. In addition to the forged satisfactions, Goldberger furthered his criminal scheme by preparing his own title report through a company he owned called Speedy Title Services LLC, a conflict of interest BRT had no knowledge of.

• That report failed to disclose the existence of the $3 million loan and omitted mentioning the $1.4 million in mortgages that he knew were not paid off. It did, however, include a bogus 2007 mortgage supposedly issued by Hartford LLC to Hartford & York LLC, another company solely owned by Goldberger. This led BRT Realty Trust to believe that once the Hartford & York LLC loan was paid off, BRT would have the first lien on the Connecticut properties. But this was not the case.

• In addition, Goldberger misrepresented that Speedy Title Services was acting as an authorized agent of First American Title Insurance Company. In doing so he caused a forged certificate of title and policy of title insurance to be delivered to BRT Realty Trust. These documents not only misrepresented that Speedy Title Services was acting on behalf of American Title Insurance Company, but also contained the forged signature of a deceased attorney.

For the Nassau County DA press release, see Brooklyn Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing $5.3M from Nassau Lenders in Multistate Mortgage Fraud Schemes (Goldberger stole mortgage proceeds from Jericho and Great Neck banks; used dead attorney's signature for closing).