Friday, March 16, 2012

Brooklyn Judge Voids Home Transfer Where Son Duped Elderly, Blind, Wheelchair-Bound Mom To Sign POA Used To Deed Property For Pennies On The Dollar

In Brooklyn, New York, the New York Post reports:
  • A shady Brooklyn real-estate deal that stripped a blind, elderly woman of the deed to her home has been undone by a judge who said the transactionreeked of fraud.”


  • A lawyer for wheelchair-bound Evelyn Popalardo, 84, filed suit in 2010 after discovering that her two-story home — which a bank appraiser valued at about $600,000 in 2007 — had been sold out from under her for a mere $6,000 by her own son.


  • Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Martin Solomon voided the deal after a civil trial in which the elderly widow testified that she couldn’t even read the document in which she signed over power of attorney to her son, Andrew, The Post has learned.


  • So the entire foundation of this transaction failed,” Solomon said, according to a transcript of his verdict. “It is as if you are building a house on a river.”


  • Popalardo’s suit charged that her son, 53-year-old Andrew — an unemployed Army vet who shared the Sunset Park home with her — persuaded her to sign over power of attorney so he could deed the property for one one-hundredth of its value to Queens real-estate investor Yuval Golan, the owner of Bapaz Adaret Properties Corp. But Andrew Popalardo insists he was as much a victim as his mom. Andrew claims that a Bapaz Adaret representative convinced him the family could lose the house if his mother ended up in a nursing home.

Source: ‘Sold out’ his blind mother (Took 6G for home).

For earlier story, see Mom gets '$onburn'.