NEW YORK — For five years, a New York City man managed to live rent-free in a landmark Manhattan hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law.
But prosecutors said this week that Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming he owned the entire New Yorker Hotel building — and tried to charge another tenant rent.
On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with filing false property information. But Barreto, 48, says he was surprised when police showed up at his friend’s apartment with guns and bulletproof shields. As far as he is concerned, it should be a civil matter and not a criminal one.
“I said, ‘Oh, I thought you were doing something for Valentine’s Day to spice up the relationship, until I saw the female officers,’” Barreto recalled telling his friend.
Barreto’s indictment for fraud and criminal contempt is just the latest chapter in the yearslong legal saga that began when he and his friend paid about $200 to rent one of more than a thousand rooms in the towering 1930s Art Deco building.
Barreto says he had just moved to New York from Los Angeles when his friend told him about a loophole in the law that allows residents of single rooms in buildings built before 1969 to demand a six-month lease. Barreto claimed he was considered a tenant because he had paid for a night at the hotel.
He asked for a lease and the hotel promptly kicked him out.
“So I went to court the next day. The judge denied. I appealed to the (state) Supreme Court and won the appeal,” Barreto said, adding that at a crucial point in the case, attorneys for the building owners did not show up, allowing him to win by default.
The judge ordered the hotel to give Baretto a key. He said he lived there until July 2023 without paying rent because the building’s owners never wanted to negotiate a lease with him, but they couldn’t throw him out.
Prosecutors in Manhattan acknowledge that housing court gave Barreto “possession” of his room. But they say he didn’t stop there: In 2019, he uploaded a fake deed to a city website, claiming to transfer ownership of the entire building to himself from the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which owned the property bought in 2019. 1976. The church was founded in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Barreto then attempted to charge several entities as the building owner, “including demanding rent from one of the hotel’s tenants, registering the hotel under his name with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection for payments for water and sewage, and demanding the hotel’s bank. transfer the accounts to him,” the Public Prosecution Service said in the statement.
“As alleged, Mickey Barreto repeatedly and fraudulently claimed ownership of one of the city’s most iconic landmarks, the New Yorker Hotel,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Located steps from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, the New Yorker has never been one of the city’s most glamorous hotels, but it has long been one of the largest. Thanks to the huge red ‘New Yorker’ sign, it is an often photographed landmark. Inventor Nikola Tesla lived in the hotel for ten years. NBC broadcast from the hotel’s Terrace Room. Boxers, including Muhammad Ali, stayed there when they had fights in the Garden. It closed as a hotel in 1972 and was used for church purposes for many years before part of the building was reopened as a hotel in 1994.
The Unification Church sued Barreto in 2019 over the deed claim, including his statements on LinkedIn as the building owner. The case is still ongoing, but a judge ruled that Barreto is not allowed to portray himself as the owner in the meantime.
A spokesperson for the Unification Church declined to comment on his arrest, citing the ongoing civil case.
In that case, Baretto argued that the judge who gave him “possession” of his room indirectly gave him the entire building because it had never been subdivided.
“It was never my intention to commit fraud. I don’t think I’ve ever committed fraud,” Barreto said. “And I never made a cent from it.”
Barreto said his legal wrangling is activism aimed at denying profits to the Unification Church. The church, known for organizing mass weddings, has been denounced for its recruitment methods and criticized by some for its friendly relationship with North Korea, where Moon was born.
He said he has never hired a lawyer for the civil cases and has always represented himself. On Wednesday he hired a criminal lawyer.
