Feds arrest Baldwin man for role in mortgage fraud

A Baldwin man was one of six people involved with engaging in a bank and wire fraud conspiracy to steal millions of dollars from financial lending institutions, federal prosecutors said.

Barthelemy Adjavehoude, a property manager from Baldwin, along with mortgage broker Alex Barrett, title agent Michelle Baker, property manager and self-described foreclosure specialist James Bayfield, and property managers Samuel Terrell Bell and Dirk Hall, were charged in a six-count indictment that was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn on June 25.

The conspirators collectively caused the financial lending institutions to loan out more than $5.5 million, of which more than $2.7 million was the conspirators’ profit from the scheme, federal prosecutors said. The investigation identified at least 17 properties in the scheme, including locations in Cambria Heights, Far Rockaway, Brooklyn, Laurelton, Jackson Heights, Jamaica, Hempstead, Rosedale, and Hollis, New York.

According to the indictments unsealed this morning, the defendants and other participants in the scheme (“the conspirators”) caused mortgage loan applications with false information to be submitted to lending institutions in connection with the purchase of residential properties located within the Eastern District of New York. These applications contained fraudulently inflated purchase prices and appraisals for the properties, as well as false information about the assets and income of the purchasers of the properties.