Evicted Brownsville DJ fights to reclaim family home in yearslong deed theft case

Michael Baker in front of the home his family owned in Brownsville. In a civil lawsuit he filed in 2019, and a separate complaint to the New York attorney general’s office, Baker claims he was duped into forfeiting the four-unit building that his parents purchased in 1963.

A Brownsville DJ is fighting to reclaim his family’s home of 59 years after losing the property and getting evicted in what he calls “a fraudulent deed theft transaction.” But new evidence is prompting a Brooklyn judge to take a fresh look at his case four years after an unsuccessful court challenge.

In a civil lawsuit he filed in 2019 and a separate complaint to the New York attorney general’s office, Michael Baker, 61, claims he was duped into forfeiting the four-unit building on Herzl Street that his parents purchased in 1963. He said he placed his trust in a friend who offered to help him cover back taxes by connecting him with a real estate speculator to facilitate a deal. After the friend flipped the house, Baker tried to challenge the transaction with the help of a since-disbarred attorney who he said made key errors.

Attorneys and lawmakers say Baker’s complex case is part of a growing trend targeting Black and Latino homeowners to defraud them out of potentially valuable properties in gentrifying neighborhoods. Cases like Baker’s highlight the dangers of real estate transactions between inexperienced homeowners negotiating with professional operators — with minimal representation, gaps in enforcement and hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake.

Baker’s troubles began after his father died in 2014, and he was named as executor of the estate, Baker told Gothamist. Baker took over the building, which came with $44,000 in back taxes that he couldn’t afford to pay.

In 2018, Baker said his friend Dwayne Beckford offered to help arrange a loan to pay off the tax debt and avoid possible foreclosure.

Beckford connected Baker with a real estate speculator and consultant named Morais Dicks to set up financing, on the condition that Baker transfer the property deed to a company Beckford had established, according to Baker’s court filings and a complaint he made with the state attorney general’s office in 2021.

Baker claims Beckford and Dicks told him he could rely on them because like him, they were also Jamaican.

“The reason why I fell into this trap is because of trust,” he said. “If I didn't know him, I wouldn't trust him.”

Beckford and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Dicks said he did not recall the case and hung up a phone call after saying he wanted to speak with his lawyer. His lawyer declined to discuss Baker’s deed theft claims.

Baker alleges the duo pledged to add him to Beckford’s new ownership company and promised to return the property after Baker made a year of payments to Beckford, improved his credit and qualified for his own mortgage. Baker’s attorney — referred to him by Dicks — did not attend the closing.

Baker said they discussed a contract to formalize the plan, but nothing ever materialized. Beckford and Dicks denied the existence of that agreement in response to the 2019 lawsuit.

Instead, Beckford flipped the building, selling it for $700,000 roughly six months after acquiring it, property records show. On the first day of 2019, Beckford and his brother told Baker that their mortgage lender, Golden Bridge, had “rescinded” the loan, even after Baker made regular payments, Baker said in his court filings.

Baker received an eviction notice from the new owner soon afterward. He said that was when he realized he had been conned.

“My mom worked all her life for this, for somebody else to scam us out of it. And then I'm supposed to just sit back and don't do nothing?” he said.

A yearslong fight

Baker remained in the building and sued Beckford, Dicks and others to reclaim the home, but ended up losing the case after his lawyer — who now faces felony larceny charges in a separate case — filed documents riddled with errors and missed key appearances, he said, including a housing court hearing in February 2020 that led to Baker's eviction. Baker filed a motion to reargue the case last year, correcting several of the mistakes he alleges attorney Audrey Thomas made, including mischaracterizing what happened to a check Baker was supposed to receive in exchange for the property and seemingly absolving the new purchaser of any wrongdoing.

A marshal kicked Baker, his son, his niece and her toddler out of the building in July 2022. He stayed with friends and occasionally spent the night on a nearby park bench before moving into a basement apartment down the street from his former home.

Baker maintains he is a victim of a scheme to pry away the valuable property.

Over the past year, he has advocated for himself and other victims of deed theft, deed fraud and misplaced trust, speaking out about losing his family home in multiple forums. He was invited to testify at a state Senate hearing last fall. He shared his experience with a filmmaker for a short documentary released by BRIC TV on Wednesday.

“They just take away their building and then they're homeless,” Baker said. “If that can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.”

‘Hard to prove’

Baker’s case reflects the complexity of deed theft investigations, which are complicated when a homeowner signs legally binding documents and some money is exchanged. Without a smoking gun document, like a contract pledging to transfer the property back to the original owner, deed fraud victims face an unforgiving legal path, said Scott Kohanowski, director of the City Bar Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project.

“Generally in these cases, it’s really hard to prove the fraud part,” Kohanowski said. “These practices are extensive and we encounter them regularly, but to litigate them is resource-intensive and it’s not something any one legal services project can take on to the extent necessary.”

Last week, Attorney General Letitia James and state lawmakers introduced a legislative package that could make it easier to prosecute deed theft, which her office says disproportionately targets “Black and Brown homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods.”

Since 2014, the city sheriff’s office has received nearly 3,500 deed theft complaints, with 1,500 coming from Brooklyn alone, James’ office said in a news release.

Those efforts might not be enough to help Baker.

In an affidavit, Oniel Alexander, a real estate agent who purchased the building from Beckford’s company, called the sale “an entirely straightforward transfer of title” from Baker to Beckford to his company, Maka Communications.

But Arthur Burkle, an attorney working with Baker on his effort to reargue the case, said the transactions filed with the city’s property records system by Beckford and Alexander raise several questions over the timing of the sales and whether payments were actually made on the mortgage.

Baker supposedly received $700,000 from the transfer of the home to Beckford’s company, according to the deed filed with the city. Burkle and Baker said that never happened.

Beckford obtained a $400,000 mortgage and presented a personal check to Baker for $300,000 to cover the remainder, according to documents submitted at the closing. But Beckford and Dicks took the check back, Baker alleges in court records. In his initial lawsuit, Baker’s then-attorney Thomas represented that Baker tried to cash the check but it bounced. Baker said that was one of the many errors he has tried to correct in his most recent motion.

Heidi Gliboff, a Queens notary who stood in for Baker’s then-attorney Mark Crawford at the closing, flagged the use of the personal check rather than a bank-certified check in a memo to Crawford on the day of the June 2018 transaction.

“While normally this would be of concern, I was assured by parties present that Mr. Baker and Purchaser were comfortable with Mr. Baker accepting the personal check,” she wrote. “It appeared that the parties were well acquainted and some understanding had been reached (I’m assuming) prior to the closing.”

Gliboff said she did not recall the specific closing nearly five years later, but said she would have recommended against accepting the personal check unless Baker insisted.

“I wouldn't have closed on something like that unless the person I was representing was comfortable, but really comfortable because that would've made me really uncomfortable,” she said in an interview. “You can't take a personal check of the closing for anything over $1,000.”

“I hate stories like this,” she added.

Dicks made more than $40,000 for the role of his company Progressive Homes and Development Inc. in the property transaction, with tens of thousands more going to the lender, Golden Bridge, and a title company called CA Land Abstract, closing documents show. Crawford held about $217,000 in escrow, and issued $75,000 of that to Beckford.

That left Baker with just over $140,000, according to a closing statement. He said he used the money to cover the tax liens and renovate the apartments in the building. Baker said he assumed he would recover ownership of the property and had what he needed to rehab the apartments. For six months, he said, he continued making what he thought were mortgage payments of over $3,000.

But Beckford never added Baker as a principal for the new company like he had previously agreed, according to the complaint.

Burkle said there are better ways to help someone like Baker who is at risk of foreclosure, like securing a small mortgage to pay off the liens or adding Baker to the newly formed ownership group.

“It didn’t have to go this way at all,” he said.

Things only got worse for Baker. At the start of 2019, Beckford informed Baker that Golden Bridge had “rescinded” the loan and that he had lost the property, according to Baker. The next day, Alexander’s company Maka Communications LLC sent Baker an eviction notice.

“I did the renovation with the money that they gave me and then they took back the building … and gave me nothing,” Baker said. “So now I’m homeless.”

Golden Bridge, the mortgage lender, did not respond to an email or phone message seeking information on the “rescinded” loan claim or the mortgage payments.

New evidence

So far, no law enforcement agency has taken up Baker’s case.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office looked into the transaction, but declined to comment on the extent of the investigation. A spokesperson for the attorney general said only that the office received Baker’s complaint.

But Baker isn’t backing down. He has kept fighting from a basement apartment down the street from his former home.

Last summer, he filed a motion to reargue the case based on new evidence: a video of Alexander, the real estate agent who purchased the building, on the day of Baker’s eviction in 2022.

“I told them, I said, ‘Why don’t you give the man back his place. That’s what I told them,’” Alexander says to Baker in the video, which was recorded by Baker’s son and reviewed by Gothamist.

Baker and Burkle say the statement contradicts what Alexander had said in a sworn affidavit 18 months earlier, where he claimed he did not “have any knowledge of even the existence of” Baker before the lawsuit and had “no notice of any unusual or suspicious facts about” the property transfer.

They say the video from the day of the eviction in July 2022 shows that Alexander was aware of Baker’s status as former owner, and had even talked to Beckford about the earlier transaction.

More than four months after the eviction, Alexander filed a police report about the encounter. In an affidavit submitted to the court the same day, he said he felt “unsafe, very frightened and vulnerable” when confronted by a seething Baker and that he only made the statement to appease him.

Alexander did not respond to multiple phone calls and text messages at the number included on his real estate website, which lists Baker’s longtime home for rent. His attorney did not respond to an email requesting comment.

In court documents, Beckford and Dicks have denied any wrongdoing in response to Baker’s complaint.

Dicks’ attorney Fitzmore Harris declined to discuss the case.

“[Baker has] been through the process of the court,” Harris said. “He filed appeals or whatever else that didn't work.”

Harris also declined to discuss Dicks’ past history of fraud investigations and criminal convictions. Court records show Dicks was sentenced to 15 months in prison on federal fraud charges in 1997 and has been sued multiple times for misrepresentation in real estate transactions.

In June 2021, Dicks filed a lawsuit against title companies over an alleged forged signature on a deed transfer for a Crown Heights building. In his complaint, he described being investigated by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office over the murky transactions at the property based on a tip that the home was stolen. He said the prosecutor on the case was “satisfied that [Dicks] had not stolen the premises.” The Brooklyn DA’s office declined to comment.

In 2018, Dicks reached a $50,000 settlement with the state attorney general after admitting he had harassed tenants and threatened to call immigration enforcement to drive them out of an East Harlem building he acquired a 50% stake in.

Baker says his problems were also compounded by his own attorneys.

Baker asked Crawford, his attorney for the initial deed transfer, to represent him in a lawsuit to try to reclaim the building in 2019. According to a signed contract, Crawford at first agreed, but responded days later in a letter saying he was “sincerely frustrated by your plight” but unable to take on the case. Crawford declined to discuss the case when contacted last week.

In the letter, Crawford referred Baker to Thomas, a client of his who was at the time facing disbarment proceedings over allegations she stole from another person she was representing. Thomas, a former attorney for fake heiress Anna Sorokin, now faces grand larceny charges in Queens on a separate matter.

Thomas filed a complaint without an accompanying notice that would stop any transactions on the Herzl Street home, according to court papers Baker submitted last year. By the time she filed both documents together, Alexander registered the deed with the city, giving the appearance that the new deed was registered before Baker filed a lawsuit to stop any sales — a “crucial delay,” Baker wrote to the court. A judge later cited the gap in an order to dismiss Baker’s lawsuit.

After the loss, Thomas told Baker she would handle an appeal for $30,000 — double what she had charged the first time around. Baker declined and the two had a falling out, exchanging heated text messages, which Gothamist reviewed.

Thomas defended her work on the case and blamed the judge for the result.

“Brooklyn is a cesspool,” she said.

Nevertheless, she said she still believes Baker was exploited by people he thought he could trust.

“The part that really did not sit well with me was the fact that they were still collecting the goddamn mortgage. How much of a demon could you be?” she said. “They were still making him pay the mortgage every month.”

But on Tuesday, Baker saw a glimmer of hope.

Brooklyn Judge Mark Partnow granted Baker’s motion to reargue the case based on the video of Alexander, the purchaser, on the day of the eviction.

“That’s good news,” Baker said. “It’s the first daylight in the whole situation.”