Legal Aid asks financial institution to help Queens deed theft victim

A Queens man who lost his house in a mortgage scam is about to be evicted from the home he has lived in most of his life.

Johnnie Jackson, 64, and his Legal Aid Society attorney are calling on Wilmington Trust, a division of M&T Bank, to stop the eviction and return the property deed to Jackson.

“Our client fell victim to a large-scale mortgage fraud scheme that stripped him of his most significant asset, his family home, and now he is being victimized all over again by Wilmington Trust Bank,” said Jennifer Levy, staff attorney in the foreclosure prevention and homeowner preservation unit at the Legal Aid Society.

A spokesman for Wilmington Trust declined to comment.

In New York City, there have been more than 3,350 complaints of deed theft – where title to a property is taken without the owner’s knowledge or approval – since 2014, disproportionately impacting communities of color, according to the Legal Aid Society.

Such scams have declined in recent years. Last year, 154 complaints were filed with the Department of Finance, compared to 665 in 2015. But deed theft was a persistent feature amid the financial crisis of 2008.

In 1994, Jackson bought the St. Albans house, where he grew up, from his parents, who had owned it since 1956, according to the Legal Aid Society. Jackson and his brother continue to live in the property, which Jackson at one point owned completely.

Jackson’s trouble began in 2010 when he took out a loan for $108,000 to fix up the house, according to the Legal Aid Society. The man who arranged Jackson’s loan was later convicted in a mortgage modification scheme that involved more than 1,000 financially distressed homeowners.

As part of the fraud, the deed to Jackson’s house was illegally transferred to a “straw buyer,” a person who bought the house on behalf of someone else, according to the Legal Aid Society. Unbeknownst to Jackson, the straw buyer then took out mortgages against the house, extracting equity, and sent the property into foreclosure.

The straw buyer gave up ownership of the property and transferred the deed to Wilmington Trust, according to the Legal Aid Society. In 2019, Wilmington Trust went to court to ask a judge to evict Jackson so it could take possession of the house.