A man who succeeded in using a New York City housing law to live rent-free in an iconic hotel has been charged with fraud after he claimed to own it.

For five years, a New York City man managed to live rent-free in a landmark Manhattan hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law.

But prosecutors this week said Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming ownership of the entire New Yorker Hotel building — and tried to charge another tenant rent.

On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with filing false property records. But Barreto, 48, says he was surprised when police showed up at his boyfriend’s apartment with guns and bullet-proof shields. As far as he is concerned, it should be a civil case, not a criminal one.

  • Flying Squid
    38•9 months ago

    This is such a weird story…

    “I said ’Oh, I thought you were doing something for Valentine’s Day to spice up the relationship until I saw the female officers,’” Barreto recalled telling his boyfriend.

    The judge ordered the hotel to give Baretto a key. He said he lived there until July 2023 without paying any rent because the building’s owners never wanted to negotiate a lease with him, but they couldn’t kick him out.

    But they say he didn’t stop there: In 2019, he uploaded a fake deed to a city website, purporting to transfer ownership of the entire building to himself from the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which bought the property in 1976. The church was founded in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

    Inventor Nikola Tesla lived at the hotel for for a decade. NBC broadcasted from the hotel’s Terrace Room. Boxers, including Muhammad Ali, stayed there when they had bouts at the Garden. It closed as a hotel in 1972 and was used for years for church purposes before part of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994.