A New York City man living rent-free at an iconic Manhattan hotel for the past five years was arrested on criminal fraud charges after he filed an ownership claim to the building and attempted to collect rent from another tenant, according to authorities.
Mickey Barreto, 48, faces eviction from his free room after he allegedly filed phony paperwork that put him as the new owner of the New Yorker Hotel, leading to his Feb. 14 arrest on charges of filing false property records.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted Barreto on fraud and criminal contempt charges as part of an alleged squatting scheme that began in 2019 when Barreto first arrived at the 94-year-old building and paid $200 for a room.
Five years later, Barreto was charged even though there is an ongoing civil trial to resolve the dispute, leaving him stunned when officers in riot gear showed up at his boyfriend’s apartment on Valentine’s Day and arrested him at gunpoint.
Barreto, who moved to New York from Los Angeles in 2019, said his boyfriend made him aware of a legal loophole that allowed occupants of hotel rooms in buildings constructed before 1969 to demand a six-month lease.
Because Barreto paid for a one-night stay, legally, he could declare himself a tenant.
But the hotel refused to give a lease to Barreto and ordered him to get out.
“So I went to court the next day,” Barreto told The Associated Press. “The judge denied. I appealed to the (state) Supreme Court and I won the appeal.”
As it turned out, attorneys for the property owners failed to show up to the hearing, and Barreto ended up winning the case by default.
At the time, the judge ruled that the hotel must provide Barreto with a key, leading to Barreto’s free stay at the hotel until July 2023, as the building’s owners were unable to legally evict him.
Barreto was granted possession of the hotel room by the court in 2019, but prosecutors allege he wanted more, leading to a grandiose scheme to swap ownership of the building.
After winning in court, Barreto asserted ownership of the building by demanding rent from one of the hotel’s tenants, registering the hotel under his name with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection for water and sewage payments, and asking the hotel’s bank to transfer its accounts to him, prosecutors allege.
As part of the sham, Barreto allegedly uploaded a bogus deed to a city website, which claimed to transfer ownership of the entire building from the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity to Barreto. The church purchased the property in 1976 under the leadership of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon of South Korea.
Aware of Barreto’s actions, the church filed a civil lawsuit in 2019, shortly after Barreto claimed ownership of the building.
At the outset of the trial, Barreto argued that the original ruling that granted him “possession” of his room inadvertently transferred ownership of the entire building to him, claiming this occurred because the building had never been legally divided into separate units.
“I never intended to commit any fraud. I don’t believe I ever committed any fraud,” Barreto told the AP. “And I never made a penny out of this.”
The civil case is still in progress, but a judge has prohibited Barreto from presenting himself as the building’s owner during the ongoing proceedings.
Situated just a block away from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, the New Yorker Hotel has always been known more for its size than charm, although it has hosted major celebrities in the past, including Nikola Tesla and Muhammad Ali, and the Terrace Room once served as the broadcast headquarters of NBC.
The iconic red sign outside the hotel remains a famous landmark.
The hotel ceased operations in 1972, and four years later, the Unification Church bought the building before reopening part of it as a hotel in 1994.
