A heartbroken household who had their Queens house stolen via a flashy actual property agent’s deed fraud scheme fought via tears at sentencing Wednesday — after which have been outraged on the convicted scammer’s no-jail sentence.
Gloria Kubick, 79, mentioned priceless objects — like her deceased dad’s “Welcome House Johnny” signal from when he returned from World Warfare II service — went lacking after Autumn Valeri, 41, cast paperwork and conned Kubick and her daughter, Maria Bendek, into handing over their 61st Street house in Kew Gardens Hills, which they’ve owned since 1999.
“It’s all simply thrown within the rubbish,” Kubick recalled about objects tossed from the house she grew up in, which was bought by her dad and mom in 1940.
“It’s like their lives meant nothing,” she added.
Bendek, 53, described the expertise “like my grandparents died over again.”
“All of our recollections lived in that home and so they have been stolen,” Bendek mentioned, who purchased the home along with her mother in 1999.
Valeri, fitted in a skintight darkish go well with, was sentenced to 5 years probation and should fork over her actual property license after she admitted to stealing three Queens properties via an elaborate rip-off screwing over owners between March to July 2023, Queens prosecutors mentioned.
The slap-on-the-wrist left Kubick questioning if justice had been served.
“I don’t perceive how she will get a sentence like this when she’s destroyed folks’s lives,” Kubick instructed the decide.
Valeri and three others — Carl Avinger, Torey Guice and Lawrence Ray — cast signatures and filed faux deeds with the Metropolis Register’s workplace to take over the properties price greater than $3 million.
In regard to the mother-daughter’s house in Kew Backyard Hills, Avinger and Valery cast paperwork, together with a wedding certificates and a driver’s license, so they may promote it to a 3rd get together in Might 2023 for $600,000, based on prosecutors.
They then wired about $442,000 to Ray’s checking account after the sale, which has been topic of an ongoing civil lawsuit, based on court docket docs.
In complete, the quartet stole properties price greater than $3 million, prosecutors have mentioned.
“The victims on this case had properties that have been ripped away from them, and these have been properties that have been extra than simply 4 partitions and a roof,” Queens Assistant District Lawyer Rachel Stein mentioned in court docket.
Valeri’s sentence, which comes with no jail time, features a signed order by Queens Supreme Court docket Justice Leigh Cheng to void the fraudulent deed on the property.
Authorities have mentioned that Avinger and Valeri additionally filed a faux doc with the town’s finance division that claimed a 76-year-old girl who owned a home on 208th Avenue in Queens Village was transferring the deed to an organization Ray owned.
The conspirators additionally cast the signatures of the sufferer’s useless sister — who as soon as co-owned the home — and a notary, prosecutors have mentioned.
The defendants additionally tried snagging a Jamaica Estates house — owned by an 82-year-old girl — via the identical scheme, prosecutors have mentioned.
Valeri, who apologized to the household in court docket, pleaded responsible to a few counts of grand larceny within the second diploma on October 8.
Avinger was already sentenced to three ½ to seven years in jail after pleading responsible to id theft.
He was scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday on grand larceny fees however it was postponed till November 13.
He faces as much as 9 years at sentencing.
Queens District Lawyer Melinda Katz mentioned her workplace plans to make the most of a neighborhood legislation to void the opposite two properties’ fraudulent deeds after Avinger is sentenced — which is able to return the properties to the victims.
“Accountability isn’t the identical for each defendant,” Katz mentioned in an announcement.”
“The primary precedence right here was to make the victims complete and return their property to them.”
