NY Court Clerk Arrested On Filing Fraud

New York's Courts: another reason to be proud- Filing Fraud by Court Clerk

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HOUSE 'ROBBERS'
The New York Post by IKIMULISA LIVINGSTON, JOE MOLLICA and KATE SHEEHY - November 19, 2008

The well-connected brother of a popular Brooklyn judge - employed as the No. 2 in the borough's Civil Court Clerk's Office - helped steal an elderly widow's home out from under her, authorities said yesterday. Brooklyn Chief Deputy County Clerk John D'Emic, 59, represented the husband of the unsuspecting, 74-year-old woman at the closing on the $490,500 sale of the couple's home last year in Jamaica, Queens, officials said. The problem is, the husband, Eugene Thomas, had been dead since 1986 - and his widow, Dorothy, never put the Union Hall Street house up for sale in the first place. "They tried to take advantage of her because they thought she was alone . . . She never sold the house," her nephew, Robert Mitchell, told The Post last night. "She's a nervous wreck. She's asthmatic, she's diabetic, she's got heart trouble," Mitchell said of the aunt who helped raise him. "She's afraid to answer the door because people come knocking saying they own the house and threatening her." 

Adding insult to injury, one of the people who set up the ailing widow was her own neighbor, Shamim Choudhury, 35, who posed as her dead husband at the closing, authorities said. D'Emic and Choudhury's alleged seven other cohorts - six of whom were arraigned in Queens Criminal Court yesterday - include Norman Barabash, a onetime suspected leader of an Asian prostitution ring. Barabash, a 63-year-old CPA from Bellerose, LI, is accused of preparing false tax statements for the straw buyer in Thomas' case to land the mortgage. Prosecutors said he has admitted to the scheme. D'Emic was in private practice when he allegedly participated in the $1.4 million, phony mortgage scheme that allegedly also bilked two other victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by using fake IDs and posing as homebuyers. The brother of respected Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D'Emic and former counsel to state Sen. Martin Goldman (R-Brooklyn) began his job with the courts in October 2007. ikimulisa.livingston@ny post.com

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Court clerk indicted in mortgage scam
The New York Daily News bY WIL CRUZ AND WILLIAM SHERMAN  - November 19, 2008

An accused sex tour operator and a high-ranking Brooklyn court official were among nine people indicted Tuesday in a $1.4 million mortgage fraud scheme that featured stolen identities and an elaborate series of masquerades. In the scheme, con artists using fake IDs to conceal their participation bought and sold two Queens properties and one in Brooklyn and then took out the mortgages, authorities said. The three deals were done over an eight-day span last year, said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

The victims included a Jamaica woman who owned her home outright and now faces foreclosure; and a New Jersey woman, whose identity was stolen and is now fighting off banks over mortgages fraudulently taken out in her name, said Brown.John D'Emic, chief deputy county clerk for Kings County, allegedly was the paid attorney for the fraudulent buyers and sellers in the transactions and prepared false letters instructing how the mortgage proceeds should be distributed. D'Emic, who was in private practice at the time, was appointed to the $96,910-a-year court clerk's job in January. D'Emic, 59, was suspended from his job without pay. He did not return calls. The suspected sex tour operator, Norman Barabash, also a certified public accountant, is charged with claiming he had prepared five years' worth of tax returns for one of the buyers and preparing false letters for the mortgage applications. Barabash, 63, of Bellerose, L.I., is also under indictment for using a Queens travel agency to book sleazy sex tours to Southeast Asia. wcruz@nydailynews.com

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Was Solo Practitioner in Brooklyn When He Allegedly Falsified Documents
The New York Law Journal by Mark Fass - November 20, 2008

The chief deputy county clerk for Brooklyn Supreme Court has been charged with facilitating a $1.4 million mortgage scam in which the conspirators allegedly used fake identification to sell houses they did not own. According to Queens prosecutors, John D'Emic represented either a fake buyer or a fake seller in each of three fraudulent transactions, receiving $1,800 in each case. Mr. D'Emic also allegedly prepared false letters regarding the disbursement of mortgage funds and illegally shared fees with a second, disbarred attorney. Mr. D'Emic, who was appointed chief deputy in January and earns $96,900 annually, was arraigned on Tuesday. He faces up to four years in prison. He was immediately suspended without pay by the Office of Court Administration. According to the Queen's District Attorney's Office, the investigation that led to the arrest of Mr. D'Emic and eight others began in November 2007, when 74-year-old Dorothy Thomas came to the office's Elder Fraud Unit to report that her home had been sold without her knowledge. Ms. Thomas learned of the sale after receiving mail and foreclosure notices addressed to "Tolessi Enyonam," the property's new purported owner. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants used fake I.D.s both to secure mortgages and pose as buyers in order to sell the three Jamaica-area homes to each other and split the proceeds. Mr. D'Emic, a Brooklyn-based solo practitioner at the time of the crimes, allegedly helped close the sales and falsify documents.

Mr. D'Emic was charged with 11 counts of falsifying business records and one charge of prohibited sharing of compensation by attorneys. Reached by phone yesterday, Mr. D'Emic's attorney, Samuel Gregory, said his client did not know that the underlying sales were fraudulent. Mr. D'Emic ranks among the crimes' victims, along with the banks, the homes' actual owners and two people whose identities were used to obtain the mortgages, Mr. Samuel said. "Knowledge and intent to defraud are necessary elements in all of the substantive counts with which Mr. D'Emic is charged," Mr. Gregory said. His client, he added, had neither. "Jack D'Emic has been practicing law for somewhere around 30 years," Mr. Gregory said. "He's got a reputation for honesty and truthfulness that goes back to the first day he began to practice." As chief deputy county clerk, Mr. D'Emic oversaw jury management, which included supervising personnel in the Division of Jurors and participated in the division's day-to-day management. Although county clerkships are administrative positions that do not require legal backgrounds, many clerks - including Mr. D'Emic and two of the four sitting chief clerks - have law degrees. Mr. D'Emic's eight co-defendants include Alan Morris, a former attorney who was disbarred in 1992 and served three years for grand larceny and possession of stolen property.

According to the present indictment, Mr. Morris worked for the Babylon law firm John Weber & Associates, and served as the bank's attorney on each mortgage, notwithstanding his disbarment. He also allegedly handled all the closings and prepared and submitted false documents, among other charges. Mr. Morris' attorney, Anthony Battisti of Queens, declined to comment. Mr. Weber declined to comment, other than to say that Mr. Morris worked in a secretarial or law-clerk capacity. A second co-defendant is Norman Barabash, a Long Island man already under indictment for allegedly running a "sex tourism" travel agency, Big Apple Tours, which was twice charged by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer with promoting prostitution by leading tours to Asian brothels. Mr. D'Emic is one of 10 siblings in a prominent Bay Ridge family. His brother Matthew D'Emic is an acting Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn's Criminal Part, overseeing both the mental health and domestic violence parts. Mark.Fass@incisivemedia.com

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