Some lots look like a cavity in the mouth of a city block. And some, like the one at 237 Maple Street in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, are miniature Edens.
In the summer of 2013, about a hundred neighbors waded into waist-high weeds and dragged out bathtubs, car parts, all kinds of garbage. They built raised beds and sowed the soil with flower and vegetable seeds. They constructed a tool shed out of reclaimed wood and put in brown-red barrels to gather rainwater from the roof of the apartment house next door. They named the whole thing The Maple Street Community Garden.
Sheryll Durrant says it quickly became a gathering spot, especially the picnic table beneath the Weeping Willow tree. "If we have a potluck or anything, food is always on this table," she said. "It's just a congregation space."
But Durrant and her fellow gardeners soon discovered that, according to city records, the lot was privately owned. The gardeners say they reached out to the owners but never heard back. Then, on a weekday morning this past summer, Durrant was sitting at the picnic table with her friend, Mireille Lemaine, when a black car drove up.
Out hopped Joe and Mike Makhani.
Lemaine says the brothers walked over to her and Durrant and said, "Get out! You're trespassing. Get off of this property right now."
Thus began a battle over this typical sliver of Brooklyn — a battle that continues on the ground but has largely shifted to the Supreme Court of New York.
The gardeners and their pro bono lawyer Paula Segal say the Makhanis' claim to the lot shows hallmarks of deed fraud: a sketchy notary, a document with an incorrect Social Security number, and the extremely low sales price of $5,000 for an eighth of an acre in Central Brooklyn. That's an eyebrow-raising deal even for 2003, when the Makhanis say they bought the property.
The Makhanis counter that it's the gardeners who are squatting illegally on their property. When WNYC called the Makhanis' office, a man who wouldn't identify himself said, "No comment," and hung up the phone.
The Makhanis have a history of selling predatory mortgages and using illegitimate signatures to claim disputed properties. In fact, they went to prison for three months in 2009 for forging property records and selling homes they didn't own.
Jospeh Fucito, the sheriff of the city of New York, says deed fraud is alive and well in the city. "Last year to now, we received 734 cases from the city register," he told The Nation magazine, with whom WNYC collaborated on this story. "Those are cases that raised a red flag to indicate this could potentially be deed fraud." Fucito suspects many deed frauds go undetected and that the number is much higher.
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the number of deed fraud cases jumped a few years ago as the economy began to recover and New York real estate took off. It has remained high since then. At a recent press conference, Schneiderman said real estate booms all but invite fraud.
"The fact that the real estate market is so profitable has provided incentives for every type of scammer to come in and take advantage of it," he warned.
Barring delays, Supreme Court Judge Mark Partnow has until mid-December to deliver a ruling on whether the disputed lot on Maple Street, come spring, will be the site of plantings and parties or, as the Makhanis would have it, the construction of a five-story, 17-unit condo.
This story had additional reporting by DW Gibson. Click here for his detailed take on this story in The Nation.
