Two Pittsburgh men were charged Wednesday with conspiring to illegally transfer to companies they controlled the deeds to dozens of residential properties in the city without the owners’ knowledge.

William Joseph Schneider, 45, of the South Side is charged with 86 counts of forgery, 35 counts of theft, eight counts of criminal attempt and one count of criminal conspiracy.

William Petruskie, 57, of the South Side, is charged with 10 counts of theft and one count of conspiracy.

They turned themselves in Downtown at City Court on Wednesday morning.

Attorney Joseph Horowitz, who represents Schneider, said he had no comment.

Petruskie did not have an attorney listed in court records.

According to a criminal complaint filed by a detective at the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office, 43 properties were targeted in the scheme.

Although many were located on the South Side, additional locations included Allentown, the North Side, Carrick and Lawrenceville. Most of the properties are either dilapidated or abandoned.

In an interview with police, according to the criminal complaint, Schneider stressed that his motivation for filing the false deeds “was to take over the properties, renovate them and make his community better.”

Complaints spur investigation

Investigators said they uncovered the transfers after Allegheny County’s Department of Real Estate received a complaint from a South Side man who learned that the deed to his property no longer listed his name and had been changed without his permission.

Around the same time, employees at Ally Settlement also began investigating after receiving a call from a customer who said that the deed to his mother’s home had been transferred without her knowledge. The customer discovered the transfer, the complaint said, upon trying to refinance the property.

By mid-June, the complaint said, the Department of Real Estate had uncovered 43 fraudulent deed transfers.

They were able to link the documents through several similarities, the complaint said: deed transfer paperwork came in large manila envelopes with no return address; all of the properties sold for $1,000; and all of the deed transfers used legitimate notaries but with altered seals.

In addition, the complaint continued, all of the transfers were accompanied by two Western Union money orders purchased from Giant Eagle on Wharton Square. The money orders were used to pay for each property’s transfer tax and deed recording fee.

The DA’s office said most of the transfers were placed in the name of three limited liability companies: Beautiful Boutique LLC and Motion Ways LLC, both controlled by Schneider, according to investigators; and Blue Bags LLC, owned by Petruskie, the complaint said.

Notary names

Investigators identified Schneider based on the notary names used on the forms, including an attorney who notarized documents for Schneider’s company, Schneider’s Properties LLC, last year.

According to the investigation, the fraudulent transfers were marked with an old stamp that contained the notary’s middle name. At the time the fraudulent transfers were recorded, the notary was using a new stamp with her middle initial.

When Ally officials received a call from the man about his mother’s house, they pulled the deed and immediately recognized the notary stamp was not authentic, the complaint said.

The group at Ally then called other notaries and reviewed state records, identifying additional suspicious transfers.

They found that a common denominator was Schneider’s Properties LLC based on the return address or “prepared by” address.

Using information provided by the Department of Real Estate and Ally, detectives from the DA’s office began investigating.

They went to the Wharton Square Giant Eagle to review the money order purchases. Surveillance video from the store showed Schneider making the purchases, the complaint said.

On June 17, a witness contacted detectives and explained that Schneider said if the police called the witness asking questions “to simply tell them that they are the victim of fraud and that their LLC was being used without knowledge/consent.”

The witness said Schneider had been falsifying deed paperwork since the beginning of May, and that Schneider had taken the names of notaries used on previous property deals he’d been involved in and then bought notary stamps with those names off Amazon.

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According to Amazon records, the complaint said, Schneider bought two notary stamps and an ink pad in March.

An admission

During a police interview on June 30, Schneider initially denied any knowledge of a scheme and said he was a victim of identity theft, according to the complaint.

Schneider explained that he owned over 200 properties that he bought to rehab and flip and had been doing so since 2021, the DA’s office said.

However, after being confronted with evidence against him, the complaint said, Schneider admitted to the scheme, though he denied making any money from it.

“Schneider stated he did it to show how easy it was to do and continued because he was kind of on a roll,” the DA’s detective wrote.

According to the criminal complaint, Schneider paid Petruskie $10,000 to participate in the scheme.

“Petruskie stated that he and Schneider planned to hold on to the properties ‘until it was safe to sell ‘em,’” the filing said.