For 5 years, a New York Metropolis man managed to reside rent-free in a landmark Manhattan lodge by exploiting an obscure native housing regulation.

However prosecutors this week mentioned Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming possession of all the New Yorker Resort constructing — and tried to cost one other tenant hire.

On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with submitting false property information. However Barreto, 48, says he was shocked when police confirmed up at his boyfriend’s residence with weapons and bullet-proof shields. So far as he’s involved, it must be a civil case, not a prison one.

“I mentioned ‘Oh, I assumed you have been doing one thing for Valentine’s Day to boost the connection till I noticed the feminine officers,'” Barreto recalled telling his boyfriend.

Barreto’s indictment on fraud and prison contempt costs is simply the newest chapter within the years-long authorized saga that started when he and his boyfriend paid about $200 to hire one of many greater than 1,000 rooms within the towering Artwork Deco construction inbuilt 1930.

Barreto says he had simply moved to New York from Los Angeles when his boyfriend instructed him a couple of loophole that enables occupants of single rooms in buildings constructed earlier than 1969 to demand a six-month lease. Barreto claimed that as a result of he’d paid for an evening within the lodge, he counted as a tenant.

He requested for a lease and the lodge promptly kicked him out.

“So I went to court docket the subsequent day. The choose denied. I appealed to the (state) Supreme Courtroom and I received the enchantment,” Barreto mentioned, including that at an important level within the case, attorneys for the constructing’s homeowners did not present up, permitting him to win by default.

The choose ordered the lodge to offer Baretto a key. He mentioned he lived there till July 2023 with out paying any hire as a result of the constructing’s homeowners by no means needed to barter a lease with him, however they could not kick him out.

Manhattan prosecutors acknowledge that the housing court docket gave Barreto “possession” of his room. However they are saying he did not cease there: In 2019, he uploaded a pretend deed to a metropolis web site, purporting to switch possession of all the constructing to himself from the Holy Spirit Affiliation for the Unification of World Christianity, which purchased the property in 1976. The church was based in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Solar Myung Moon.

Barreto then tried to cost varied entities because the proprietor of the constructing “together with demanding hire from one of many lodge’s tenants, registering the lodge underneath his title with the New York Metropolis Division of Environmental Safety for water and sewage funds, and demanding the lodge’s financial institution switch its accounts to him,” the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned within the assertion.

“As alleged, Mickey Barreto repeatedly and fraudulently claimed possession of one of many Metropolis’s most iconic landmarks, the New Yorker Resort,” mentioned Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg.

Situated a block from Madison Sq. Backyard and Penn Station, the New Yorker has by no means been among the many metropolis’s most glamorous accommodations, but it surely has lengthy been amongst its largest. Its enormous, pink “New Yorker” signal makes it an oft-photographed landmark. Inventor Nikola Tesla lived on the lodge for for a decade. NBC broadcasted from the lodge’s Terrace Room. Boxers, together with Muhammad Ali, stayed there after they had bouts on the Backyard. It closed as a lodge in 1972 and was used for years for church functions earlier than a part of the constructing reopened as a lodge in 1994.

The Unification Church sued Barreto in 2019 over the deed declare, together with his representations on LinkedIn because the constructing’s proprietor. The case is ongoing, however a choose dominated that Barreto cannot painting himself because the proprietor within the meantime.

A Unification Church spokesperson declined to remark about his arrest, citing the continuing civil case.

In that case, Baretto argued that the choose who gave him “possession” of his room not directly gave him all the constructing as a result of it had by no means been subdivided.

“I by no means supposed to commit any fraud. I do not consider I ever dedicated any fraud,” Barreto mentioned. “And I by no means made a penny out of this.”

Barreto mentioned his authorized wrangling is activism geared toward denying income to the Unification Church. The church, recognized for conducting mass weddings, has been sued over its recruiting strategies and criticized by some over its pleasant relationship with North Korea, the place Moon was born.

He mentioned he has by no means employed a lawyer for the civil instances and has all the time represented himself. On Wednesday, he secured a prison protection lawyer.