STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A real-estate lawyer from Long Island was sentenced Tuesday on Staten Island to a year in jail and must pay a Tottenville woman $75,000 for stealing a down payment from her.
Jarrett Haber, 46, was representing a friend of his who was selling her Bentley Street home for $475,000. Prosecutors said the buyer had placed $75,000 in an escrow account as a down payment.
On July 29, 2010, the date of the closing, the money wasn't there, authorities said.
Haber told investigators the cash was stolen from him, a law enforcement source said. Nevertheless, the source said, "The money came out of the account that he was in control over."
A grand jury indicted Haber in January on grand larceny and stolen-property possession charges.
Three weeks ago, the Hicksville resident pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court, St. George, to third-degree grand larceny, a felony, said a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan.
In line with the sentence, a judgment of $75,000 was entered against Haber.
"I think it was a very fair plea negotiation and sentence," said Haber's lawyer, Robert DePalma.
While Haber has already served his jail term pending the case's disposition, he's still being held in lieu of $200,000 bail, stemming from an unrelated criminal case in Brooklyn state Supreme Court.
Haber was arrested in February 2010 and accused of running a mortgage fraud scheme alongside Rabbi Victor Koltun of Brooklyn.
The two allegedly took out a $225,000 mortgage on the home of a Brooklyn woman who was living in a nursing home. She got a call in October 2009 demanding payment on the mortgage, prosecutors said. That came as a surprise because she and her husband had owned the home since 1975, and hadn't had a mortgage on it since 1987.
Investigators learned that Haber and Koltun fraudulently used several properties to secure a $225,000 mortgage, which they used to pay down a debt from another real estate scam in Long Island.
Koltun ended up in much deeper trouble in December 2010 -- authorities in Newburgh, Orange County, say he hired two hardened felons to kill a former police officer and his nephew who were trying to extort money from him. That case is pending, according to online state court records.
Source: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/10/real-estate_lawyer_sentenced_t.html
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