Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that two homes were returned on January 28 to their rightful owners after a judge voided fraudulent deeds for the properties. The homes were stolen as part of a deed fraud scheme and the defendants then sold the properties to third parties. Four people were ultimately convicted for the scheme, including a John Doe defendant whose identity remains unknown.

The DA’s office initiated proceedings under New York State Criminal Procedure Law 420.45 to void the deeds after the defendants were convicted. It was the 11th time the DA’s office – which was the first in the state to employ this statute in 2023 – has utilized the law to return homes after a conviction in a deed fraud case.

District Attorney Katz said: “We will not stand by and let property owners lose their homes to fraudsters. Prosecuting those who steal people’s homes is only part of our work – we are just as committed to returning those homes to their rightful owners. The decisive legal action taken by my Housing and Worker Protection Bureau spares the victimized families from having to go to civil court in an attempt to reclaim the deeds to their properties. My office has already secured convictions for four defendants involved in this deed theft scheme and the victims have now been made whole with this court order.”

The DA’s office last year indicted four individuals and three companies on charges of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, conspiracy and other crimes for allegedly stealing three homes from their rightful owners in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens Village and Jamaica Estates.

Defendant Torey Guice pleaded guilty on October 7 to falsifying business records in the second degree and was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge and had to consent to void the fraudulent deed for which he was charged.

Codefendant Autumn Valeri pleaded guilty on October 8 to three counts of grand larceny in the second degree. Valeri was sentenced on November 5 to five years of probation and was required to surrender her real estate license and consent to the deeds of the stolen property being voided.

Codefendant Lawrence Ray pleaded guilty on October 16 to scheme to defraud in the first degree and was sentenced on November 20 to five years of probation and forfeiture of $403,829.22. He was also required to consent to the deeds of the stolen property being voided.

A fourth defendant, a Johe Doe who has used multiple aliases and whose pedigree information is unverified, pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the first degree and two counts of grand larceny in the second degree. He was sentenced to 4 ½ years to nine years in prison on the first-degree count and to four to eight years on the second-degree counts to run concurrently. He was also sentenced to a concurrent term of 3 ½ years to seven years for identity theft for stealing the identity of a Carl Avinger, a Tennessee resident.

Three corporations associated with the defendants also pleaded guilty in the scheme.

At the time of Doe’s and Valeri’s pleas, Supreme Court Justice Leigh Cheng signed an order to void the fraudulent deed on one of the three properties. The two other properties had already been transferred to third parties necessitating the use of New York State Criminal Procedure Law 420.45.

Since it was formed in 2020, the DA’s Housing and Worker Protection Bureau has returned 23 homes to their rightful owners, including 11 utilizing the new state statute.

Assistant District Attorney Rachel Stein, Deputy Chief of the District Attorney’s Housing and Worker Protection Bureau, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys William Jorgenson, Bureau Chief, and Christina Hanophy, Senior Deputy Bureau Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Joseph T. Conley III.