Brooklyn’s top prosecutor has indicted four scammers for allegedly selling a Canarsie home which they did not own.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced the charges on May 22 against Ramjit Jaikaran of Queens, Colin Hill of Queens, Kaso Rampersad of Florida, and Justin Codrington of New Rochelle in relation to the 2017 scheme.
Prosecutors allege the four men fraudulently convinced a Guyanese couple to pay $276,000 for the home, located on E. 94th Street in Canarsie. The home was actually registered to Ruth Adelman, who died in 1993 and did not have a will.
According to a subsequent investigation, Jaikaran acted as a real estate agent on behalf of Rampersad, who posed as the heir to the deceased homeowner. Hill, impersonating a lawyer, presented the victims will falsified documents, including a fraudulent deed and birth certificate, purporting to show Rampersad’s legal ownership of the property.
The victims handed over two bank checks, totalling $276,000, to the con artists, believing they were purchasing the legal rights to the Southern Brooklyn home, according to Gonzalez.
Codrington deposited one of the ill-gotten checks to a shell corporation, Gonzalez said, while the other was chased by a company controlled by Jaikaran’s wife.
The victims learned that they had been defrauded several months later, when they were sued by Valley Capital Partners, LLC, which had truly purchased the home from the deceased homeowners actual next of kin, according to prosecutors.
The four men face a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charges.
Each was hit with various charges in the 20-count indictment, which included conspiracy, identity theft, and falsifying business records.
Codrington is being held on $30,000 bail, while the other three were released without bail, prosecutors said.
The four men are due back in court on June 26.
Gonzalez used the indictment to reaffirm his office’s pledge to the prosecution of homeowner fraud.
“I am committed to protecting homeowners and home purchasers in Brooklyn and will now seek to hold the defendants accountable for this alleged scheme,” said Gonzalez. “As property values continue to rise in Brooklyn, protecting residents from fraudulent real estate schemes is a top priority.”
