Manhattan prosecutors say a 24-year-old housing specialist stole thousands of dollars from homeless shelter residents by fooling them into thinking they needed to pay him directly to secure apartments.<\/p>\n
An indictment announced Monday, charges David Aguero, with several offenses including grand larceny, bribery, identity theft and scheme to defraud. Manhattan prosecutors say that between March and June of this year, Aguero abused his position at a Manhattan shelter, stealing more than $4,000 from residents who had city-issued housing vouchers.<\/p>\n
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg said in an announcement Monday that Aguero also used personally identifiable information from the residents to open credit cards in their names, and then spend heavily on those accounts.<\/p>\n
\u201cShelter residents trusted David Aguero, a housing specialist, to help them secure stable places to live. As alleged, Aguero broke their trust and stole thousands of dollars from them,\u201d Bragg said in the statement. \u201cThose who take advantage of New Yorkers desperate for homes in the midst of our housing crisis will be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s office said the investigation is ongoing, and encouraged any potential victims or people with more information to call it at 212-335-3600, regardless of immigration status..<\/p>\n
Real estate experts say renters are frequently victimized<\/a> in New York City’s rental market. Earlier this summer, a Gothamist investigation uncovered a pattern of allegations<\/a> of stolen deposits against a man named David Michael, and his company, The Pyramid Group. Michael has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has said in a statement that any claims that he stole money “or otherwise engaged in criminal conduct” are false.<\/p>\n Gothamist reporting found many people who come to authorities with allegations they\u2019ve been victimized in rental schemes are referred to small claims court \u2014 where defendants must be served properly before civil cases can move forward, and where plaintiffs often have trouble collecting money owed to them even after successfully securing judgments.<\/p>\n The Legal Aid Society, listed in city records as defending Aguero, has not yet returned a message seeking comment on the charges against him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manhattan prosecutors say a 24-year-old housing specialist stole thousands of dollars from homeless shelter residents by fooling them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-317918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317918","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=317918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}