On May 22, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office announced that Craig Hecht, 51, of Long Island, had been charged in connection with a scheme to steal a vacant brownstone building from an elderly homeowner.
According to the District Attorney’s Office, the owner and her family moved out in 2010 after a fire made the building uninhabitable. Hecht and a codefendant allegedly used a forged deed to transfer the property to an entity they controlled and sold it for $850,000 in 2015.
Hecht received more than $250,000 from the sale, and the codefendant received $310,000.
The victim contacted the District Attorney’s Office after a neighbor informed her that someone was working on the building.
Hecht was charged with two counts of second-degree grand larceny and two counts of second-degree money laundering. He was ordered held on a $150,000 bond. Hecht is facing up to 15 years in prison.
The codefendant remains at large.
Another fraudulent land deal
Hecht lives in Mount Sinai, New York, which is located on the north shore of Long Island. Mount Sinai was known as Old Mans until the name was changed in 1840. According to local legend, the original name stemmed from a fraudulent land deal. A man named John Scott allegedly convinced a wealthy British man named John Gotherson to pay him $10,000 pounds for a large parcel of land that didn’t exist. After Gotherson attempted to claim the land, local residents started to refer to it in jest as “the Old Mans”.