The feds and town should probe whether or not NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams dedicated mortgage fraud and broke different legal guidelines in gentle of “severe” pink flags surrounding his troubled possession of a Brooklyn property that resulted in foreclosures, a fellow Democrat demanded this week.
Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) fired off letters Monday to Federal Housing Finance Director William Pulte and NYC Division of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber within the wake of The Put up’s unique final week revealing how the socialist pol misplaced a two-family dwelling in Canarsie to Financial institution of America after he stopped paying the mortgage and racked up almost $1 million in debt over 15 years.
Holden in each letters mentioned public data counsel Williams misrepresented his monetary state of affairs for years by accumulating lease from a number of tenants dwelling on the property whereas concurrently being delinquent on a federally backed mortgage.
“If Mr. Williams misrepresented his monetary place, rental revenue, or occupancy standing in mortgage purposes or ongoing certifications, he might have violated federal statutes governing mortgage fraud and financial institution fraud,” Holden wrote Pulte.
“This matter is especially troubling given Mr. Williams’ outstanding function in publicly criticizing landlords by the Metropolis’s “Worst Landlords Watchlist” whereas allegedly partaking in comparable misconduct himself. The obvious hypocrisy, mixed with the dimensions of monetary mismanagement and potential deception, undermines public confidence in elected management.”
Williams – who earns $184,000 yearly and picked up hundreds of {dollars} a 12 months renting the house to a number of tenants – stopped making his $1,344 month-to-month mortgage funds in 2010, in line with data.
Holden in his letter to Strauber questioned whether or not Williams broke New York legislation by “knowingly making false statements” in his annual monetary disclosure filings.
Williams, who served as a Brooklyn councilman from 2010 to March 2019 earlier than being elected public advocate, didn’t checklist incomes rental revenue in a lot of his previous yearly filings relationship again over a decade — regardless of courtroom data exhibiting tenants dwelling on his property.
However he did checklist incomes anyplace from $5,000 to $55,000 in lease in each 2022 and 2023, in line with his most up-to-date disclosure statements.
Williams was slapped with a foreclosures motion in 2014 by Financial institution of America over a $389,600 mortgage he took out on the home in 2006 to finance a vegan sandwich store in Park Slope that went stomach up two years later.
Williams has lengthy blamed his monetary woes on the phrases of his mortgage and tenants who didn’t pay lease.
The home was listed on the market by a foreclosures public sale final month, nevertheless it reverted again to Financial institution of America possession after not a single bidder supplied a value exceeding the debt owed, which is now as much as $944,582, in line with Public sale.com.
The DOI and the Federal Housing Finance Company declined remark.
Williams’ spokesman Kevin Fagan shot down the claims, saying Holden “has each proper to request losing money and time investigating a decade-old non-story on a false premise — although it might have been extra environment friendly if he’d merely seemed on the public data and seen that the general public advocate has precisely reported any lease collected and filed required disclosures.”
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