{"id":231677,"date":"2026-05-14T17:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/231677\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T17:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:47:08","slug":"former-brooklyn-supreme-court-judge-arrested-for-alleged-involvement-in-real-estate-fraud-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/231677\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Brooklyn Supreme Court judge arrested for alleged involvement in real estate fraud schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abajournal.com\/\" title=\"Home\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Home<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abajournal.com\/news\/\" title=\"Read the Daily News\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daily News<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tFormer Brooklyn Supreme Court judge arrested\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Ethics<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tFormer Brooklyn Supreme Court judge arrested for alleged involvement in real estate fraud schemes<\/p>\n<p class=\"byline\">By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abajournal.com\/authors\/36935\/\" title=\"View this author&#039;s information\" style=\"color:{default_link_color};\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shirley Henderson<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dateline\">May 14, 2026, 12:13 pm CDT<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP_Judge_Edward_Harold_King_750px.jpg\" alt=\"AP Judge Edward Harold King_750px\" height=\"500\" width=\"750\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Former New York City Judge Edward Harold King leaves the Brooklyn federal court on May 13, 2026, in New York after making an initial appearance on a charge of wire fraud conspiracy in connection with an alleged real estate investment scam. (Photo by Michael R. Sisak\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n<p>A former Brooklyn Supreme Court justice was arrested Tuesday for allegedly participating in numerous schemes to defraud investors in commercial real estate deals.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Edward Harold King resigned from the bench in February and faces one count of wire fraud conspiracy, as does Sam Sprei, a real estate investor. They both appeared in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>One 2024 instance alleges that Sprei approached two people with an opportunity to invest in New Jersey property, requesting funds to show that \u201cproof of liquidity\u201d be placed into an escrow account that King, a sitting judge at the time, oversaw. The investors allegedly wired $6.5 million into a bank account under King\u2019s name, according to the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in New York and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.com\/newyorklawjournal\/2026\/05\/13\/breaking-ex-brooklyn-supreme-court-judge-taken-into-custody-in-federal-investigation\/?slreturn=20260514103316\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">coverage by Law.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>King and Sprei were charged by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of the Eastern District of New York.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs alleged, the defendants stole millions of dollars from investors by cynically leveraging King\u2019s position as a sitting judge to lend false legitimacy to supposed investment opportunities,\u201d Nocella said in an emailed statement to Law.com.<\/p>\n<p>King was released on a $250,000 unsecured bond.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abajournal.com\/contact?referrer=https:\/\/www.abajournal.com\/news\/article\/new-york-ex-judge-arrested-in-fraud-investigation\" class=\"feedback-cta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n    Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home Daily News Former Brooklyn Supreme Court judge arrested\u2026 Ethics Former Brooklyn Supreme Court judge arrested for alleged&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[68017,98,100,99,68019,51509,1177,3777,34933,10917,609,10054,2710,89990,68018,9877,1066,9,24,63,90854,7988],"class_list":["post-231677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-aba-journal","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-career-practice","tag-careers","tag-court-administration","tag-criminal-justice","tag-criminal-procedure","tag-ethics","tag-government","tag-judiciary","tag-law","tag-lawyer-discipline","tag-legal-news","tag-local-government","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-real-estate-property-law","tag-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}