A 48-year-old American who stayed for five years in one of New York’s most prestigious hotels at the princess’s expense has been arrested for fraud.
Mickey Barreto, arriving from Los Angeles with his partner, rents for a night for US$200, but a friend alerts him to a loophole in local law that allows occupants of single rooms in buildings built before 1969 to require a six-month lease.
As his request for a proper lease was refused, the forty-year-old went to complain in court where he won his case, on appeal, after a dismissal pronounced at first instance by the judge , reported Associated Press.
The prestigious “New Yorker” establishment which refused to negotiate a lease with its unscrupulous client whom it cannot fire due to the court decision which obliges the hotel to give him a room key.
The 48-year-old man, who clearly has a lot of ideas, even went so far as to upload a false deed on the City website for the transfer of ownership of the building housing the Big Apple hotel.
Started by justice, the suspect does not give up and files other false documents in 2023 to try to obtain ownership of the building, pleading that the judge had given him “possession” of his room in 2018, while the building was “never subdivided.”
The forty-year-old went far in his efforts, but he was arrested Wednesday and charged with fraud and providing false information about real estate, according to a press release from the Manhattan prosecutor.
“He has repeatedly and fraudulently claimed ownership of one of the city’s most emblematic monuments, the New Yorker Hotel,” said Manhattan lawyer Alvin Bragg.
