New York Paralegal Blog

   A local attorney, Michael Tulchiner, 61, of Bellmore, has been charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing over $413,000 from a client's real estate transaction. Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney announced the arrest, emphasizing the breach of trust involved when a professional is accused of using their position to steal. The Allegations According to the investigation, Tulchiner, who runs The Law Office of Michael J. Tulchiner in Melville, was hired to represent a client in a property sale. As part of the closing, a portion of the client's new refinance loan, specifically $413,237, was meant to pay off a previous loan on the property. The funds were placed in Tulchiner's mortgage disbursement account with the specific instruction that they were to be used for the closing. On August 26, 2022, Tulchiner ordered a bank check for the required amount. However, instead of delivering it, he allegedly redeposited the money into his account jus...

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), announced today the arrests of James Monahan, the owner of a real estate investment company called Panam Management Group Inc., and Edward Adams, a New York based attorney, on mail and wire fraud charges for allegedly operating a fraudulent real estate scheme. Monahan and Adams are alleged to have obtained approximately $4.7 million from investors for a real estate development project that Monahan claimed to be constructing in the Dominican Republic.

Douglas Arnsten Charged With Stealing More Than $7 Million From Client Before Fleeing to Hong Kong Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today announced the arraignment of DOUGLAS ARNSTEN, 34, a real estate attorney, for embezzling more than $7 million from a client of the Manhattan law firm Crowell & Moring, where he was formerly employed. With the assistance of officers from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and U.S. Marshals Service, ARNSTEN was returned to New York earlier today. The defendant has been charged in New York County Criminal Court with two counts of Grand Larceny in the First Degree and one count of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree.[1]

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today announced the sentencing of SHARMON WADE, 37, to nine to 18 years in prison for defrauding investors in a scam that involved fictitious real estate property investments. Judge Michael Obus granted the District Attorney’s request that WADE be considered a predicate felon for previous convictions, and ordered WADE to pay $1,242,623.13 in restitution to these victims. WADE pled guilty on May 17, 2010, to grand larceny, securities fraud, scheme to defraud, and a violation of tax law.

(CN) - Michael Jackson's former manager claims he is entitled to commissions on business deals that have taken place in the years since the King of Pop's death. Frederick DeMann, owner and president of the company DeMann Entertainment, then Weisner-DeMann Entertainment Inc., was Michael Jackson's manager during the lucrative years between 1978 and 1983 - when Jackson released the albums "Thriller" and "Off the Wall."

Kenneth G. Reidenbach was charged today by superseding indictment with bankruptcy fraud, concealing assets during a bankruptcy proceeding, and embezzling from a bankruptcy estate, announced United States Attorney Zane David Memeger. According to the superseding indictment, Reidenbach, an attorney in Lancaster, represented an individual in a bankruptcy proceeding. Reidenbach counseled the client to place nearly $40,000 in real estate proceeds into a law firm account controlled by Reidenbach and then concealed those proceeds from the bankruptcy court. The indictment also alleges that Reidenbach falsely represented that he had agreed to receive only $1,500 for representing the client in the bankruptcy proceeding. The original indictment, filed December 9, 2010, charged Reidenbach and co-defendant Herbert P. Henderson, another attorney in Lancaster, with conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud and concealing assets in bankruptcy by concealing more than $51,000 of clients’ real estate sales...

By BRIDGET FREELAND AUSTIN, Texas (CN) - A novelist and his publisher sued the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, claiming they do not need permission from the late writer's family to feature Tolkien as a character in a book that is "both a work of fiction and a critical analysis of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien." Stephen Hillard and Cruel Rune LLC say the Tolkien Estate threatened them with "immediate legal action" and demanded that Hillard's book be destroyed. The their federal complaint, Hillard says Cruel Rune published his book, "Mirkwood, A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien," in 2010. Read more>>

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Manhattan real estate developer MICHAEL HERSHKOWITZ was sentenced today to four years in prison for his participation in a $27 million Ponzi scheme involving fraudulent loans secured by nonexistent mortgages. According to the documents filed in the case in Manhattan federal court: HERSHKOWITZ, working through a Manhattan real estate development company, The Kingsland Group, Inc., and related entities (collectively, "The Kingsland Group"), fraudulently induced approximately 100 individuals to lend the Kingsland Group over $27 million to fund the renovation of approximately sixteen multi-family apartment buildings located in upper Manhattan. HERSHKOWITZ and a co-conspirator, IVY WOOLF-TURK, falsely represented that the lenders would hold, as collateral for the loans, interests in bona fide first mortgages in the various properties in which they thought they were investing. In tru...

WOBURN – Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced the guilty plea of a former Somerville real estate attorney yesterday in connection with making false statements on mortgage applications and associated documents and using the funds secured from the loans for his own purposes, rather than paying off existing loans as directed by the new lenders. Kevin Carey, age 49, of Middleboro, pled guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to the charges of Larceny over $250 (8 counts) and Willfully Making a False Statement Regarding Financial Condition or Assets (7 counts). Carey is scheduled to be sentenced on November 6, 2009, in Bristol Superior Court. While practicing as a real estate lawyer in Somerville and Medford, Carey engaged in a scheme called “mortgage stacking” on four residential properties he or his family members owned. The scheme involved serially refinancing the loans on these properties, without paying off the existing loans. Carey was also the agent for a New England tit...