It's not important whatever happens to her.
There is a reason this thread is in the Sandbox.
A private citizen many have saved a little money on interest......so it requires the US President to get involved ? This is a case for a beginning law school graduate. Originally Posted by VitaManSo saving a little money is an excuse for fraud? Do you steal all your groceries and use that excuse when the manager presses charges?
BIG NEWS by Joel Gilbert on the Letita Files: My Visit to Letitia James’s Apartment Building CONFIRMS Mortgage Fraud Allegations
...On our visit to 296 Lafayette Avenue, Antar and I sought to document the number of units in the building and the number of floors. The first thing we did was walk up the steps to the elevated first floor of the building.
Just outside the main entrance were doorbells for four units, labeled “1 floor,” “2 Floor,” “3A” and “3B” – four separate apartment units beginning at the elevated first floor.
The entire first and second floors were single apartments, while the third floor was split into two apartments, exactly as indicated on the official Certificate of Occupancy.
On the CoO, there is an additional apartment unit on the ground floor, listed as “basement.” We looked at the ground level, and sure enough the basement apartment had a separate entrance with its own doorbell.
This made for five total apartment units as listed on the CoO, and not four as James has claimed in her many mortgage applications.
The next issue we sought to verify whether the building had four stories or three stories as James has maintained in her annual HPD registrations.
In New York City, a building with a basement apartment and three additional floors above it is considered a four-story building for the purposes of HPD registration.
To qualify as “a story” a basement unit must have at least half of its height above the ground level.
If the building’s lowest level meets the definition of a basement, especially if used as an apartment, it must be counted as a story. Misclassifying a basement unit to understate the number of stories is a registration violation and can lead to potential penalties.
I measured the height from the sidewalk to the top of the floor of the basement apartment at 87 inches or 7 1/4 feet. Then I measured the distance from the sidewalk level to the bottom of the single step that led to the door of the basement apartment at only 16 inches, or 1 1/3 feet.
In sum, the ground floor “basement” apartment was roughly 82 percent above ground, unmistakably more than the 50 percent above ground needed to qualify as a “story.”
In fact, the Certificate of Occupancy for James’s building lists a “cellar” as well, under the “basement” unit, further indicating that James’s basement apartment unit is a “story” and cannot possibly be considered a cellar...