Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. Eagle file photo by Rob Abruzzese
An East Flatbush man has been
indicted by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office on a grand larceny
charge for allegedly stealing the down payment for the purchase of a
Brownsville home whose seller he represented. The defendant also
allegedly separately borrowed $14,000 from the client and never paid it
back.
Gonzalez identified the defendant
as Gerald Douglas, 52, of East Flatbush. He was arraigned today before
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Sharen Hudson on an indictment in which
he is charged with second-degree grand larceny. He was released without
bail and ordered to return to court on May 12, 2021.
According to the DA’s Office, the
defendant represented a 76-year-old woman in the sale of her
Brownsville home, negotiating the contract for her in September 2018. A
down payment of $71,700 was allegedly deposited into the defendant’s
escrow account.
The closing occurred in August 2019,
by which time the defendant had allegedly stopped returning his client’s
phone calls, and she was forced to retain new counsel to close the
transaction. The client received the sale proceeds at the closing but
not the down payment, despite repeated requests to the defendant,
according to the charges.
It is further alleged that in
June and July 2018, Douglas asked the same client if she would loan him
money, first $6,000 and then $8,000. He allegedly told her he was
expecting a rental payment for a property he owned in Flatbush, although
in fact the property had gone into foreclosure five years earlier and
he was no longer the owner.
Gonzalez commented, “The victim in
this case was allegedly defrauded of a large sum of money by her own
attorney, who had a legal duty to protect her interests. I would like to
thank my Public Integrity Bureau for its hard work in seeking to hold
the defendant accountable for his alleged criminal act and betrayal of
trust.”
Douglas was disbarred by the Appellate Division Second Department in 2019.
The case is being prosecuted by
Senior Assistant District Attorney Adam Libove of the District
Attorney’s Public Integrity Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant
District Attorney Laura Neubauer, bureau chief, and Assistant District
Attorney Michel Spanakos, deputy chief of the District Attorney’s
Investigations Division.
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