Backed By City and Courts, NYC Hotel ‘Guest’ Who Declared Himself The Owner Ruled Unfit To Stand Trial On Fraud Charges

A guest checked into the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan in 2018. He wouldn’t leave, and keeps getting the hotel’s deed transferred into the name of a non-profit he created. He’s tried to take possession of the hotel’s bank accounts and even gone to its lenders to borrow against the property. And the city’s administration and courts even, in part, backed him up.

Here’s the trick:

  • Hotels constructed in New York before July 1, 1969 which cost less than $88 per week or $350 per month on May 31, 1968 are subject to rent stabilization laws. The property opened in 1930.

  • A person becomes a permanent tenant upon requesting a lease for six months or more. Hotels are barred from “prevent[ing] such occupant from becoming a permanent tenant.”

Mickey Barreto made a reservation for one night at $149. He then requested a rent-controlled lease. Naturally, the hotel said exsqueeze me baking powder? And please leave.

So Barreto filed a deed with the Department of Finance transferring ownership of the hotel to “Mickey Barreto Missions,” a non-profit.

  • He argued that the hotel violated New York housing law by denying him a lease and kicking him out. Requesting the lease made him a “permanent tenant.”
  • He planned to use the building for a public purpose (he created a religious non-profit with his own name), and the property violated housing law, his non-profit should be the beneficiary of his permanent tenancy.
  • Since the hotel was never subdivided, whatever happens to his room which he’s entitled to happens to the whole building. So he becomes the owner of the building, Q.E.D.

new yorker hotel
Credit: Wyndham

New York City housing court ruled in his favor giving him possession of “the subject premises.” The city recorded the deed. And he started going to retail tenants demanding payment, went to Wyndham and presented himself as the new owner of the hotel, and went to the hotel’s banks to take over their accounts and to further mortgage the property.

The hotel’s true owners – the Unification Church – got a temporary restraining order preventing him from representing himself or acting as the property’s owner. But even that judge acknowledged that Barreto has “certain rights to occupy a particular room within the hotel” even if he didn’t become the owner of the hotel. The man reportedly offered to revert ownership to the Unification Church for $14 million.

Eventually his deed for the property was found to be fraudulent. A year ago he was back at it, filing a new deed. He signed a document last month backdating a 2021 transfer of ownership from Mickey Barreto Missions to.. the same entity.

In February of this year the gig was up, he was arrested, charged with fraud and his passport was confiscated. But he’s been found unfit to stand trial.

Now, two doctors and prosecutors have said that he is not mentally competent to stand trial, and a judge has given him seven days to find inpatient psychiatric care.

If he does not, he will be forced into treatment at a hearing scheduled for next week.

It was concluded that he “did not fully understand the criminal proceedings against him and that he had two mental illnesses and a drug addiction.” He says, though, that his actions were motivated by an attempt “to disrupt…the flow of money from the [Unification] church to North Korea in violation of sanctions imposed by the United States.”

The New Yorker was a Hilton from 1953 to 1956 and again from 1967 to 1972. It was then closed, sold to the Unification Church, and not re-opened as a hotel until 1994. It became a Ramada in 2000, and a Wyndham in 2014. Nikola Tesla spent his last ten years living in suite 3327 (where he died in 1943) and Muhammad Ali retreated there after his fight with Joe Frazier in March 1971.

I always thought those commercials for “Home Title Lock” were kind of a scam, but maybe the Unification Church kind of needs the service? And maybe the problem with lack of adequate housing supply in New York City isn’t actually Airbnb, but laws that make it expensive, cumbersome and risky to build and operate housing?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. It sounds like he is pretty clever. Maybe the two doctors and prosecutors need mentally competency hearings to determine if they are, in fact, sane.

  2. What’s to stop someone to do this exact thing back at him? Or to every single hotel in NY for that matter? As we’ve seen, the NY justice system is a joke.

  3. He is definitely a little crazy. However also shows how old laws that aren’t updated for the times can be used in ways never anticipated and courts (not just in NY) are basically forced to follow the law regardless of how unreasonable it may sound.

    On the other hand real hard to feel sorry that the Unification Church was the party impacted. There is such a thing as karma

  4. Gary, while it may not be possible to lock a title, many counties provide free notifications on new recording of documents against property you own. Bexar County has such a system. It’s more important when the mortgage is paid off, as it’s easier for someone to get away with a title transfer and take a mortgage on the property. The sooner you know about the change, the sooner you can fight an improper recording.

  5. The biggest collection of the smartest lawyers I know are found in NYC, so it’s still pretty good for that and some other stuff as it shows with fundraising too.

    But to live comfortably in good parts of Manhattan requires having/spending a pretty penny, paying a lot in taxes, and then still having a quality of life that involves some compromises that aren’t for everyone.

  6. …… ”Unfit To Stand Trial On Fraud Charges” could have inspired a defense of Tr*mp on fraud charges

  7. This hotel was either the first or second hotel in the city to charge me a scam fee on award nights. The other one may have been Le Parker Meridien on W57th during the Starwood days.

  8. @Dave W. If you’re surrounded by uneducated people, they’re less likely to figure out and take advantage of loopholes like this.

    Obvioulsy this stuff happens in a place like New York. The odds are there. There’s lots of people. Lots of smart people. And it’s an older city with lots of antequated laws on the books to rifle through and figure out how to finage.

    While this guy was clearly a scammer, he was pretty clever to figure this out. Billy Bob in BFE woudn’t be able to figure this out. He’s too busy foaming at the mouth over misdirected economic concerns — stuff like blaming the President for the price of eggs. No way he can understand all the legal nuance in a scam like this.

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