A former Suffolk County lawmaker and the owners of a Soho S&M club were among five people Suffolk County prosecutors accuse of running a $50 million mortgage scam. Suffolk DA Thomas Spota, after detailing how the group allegedly bought homes with fake buyers taking out huge mortgages (with forged documents), pocketed the money and then left the homes empty, said, "The damage these defendants single-handedly caused to the East End is simply appalling."
Apparently the group used had "straw buyers"—people who were paid to pose as buyers— to facilitate getting mortgages—and those people were recruited via S&M Club Arena Studios. Suffolk DA spokesman Robert Clifford explained, "Some of the straw buyers were patrons of the club and the dominatrixes approached them and asked if they wanted to make some easy money." The straw buyers were allegedly paid $10,000 by the group, who would use their info to get the loans. According to the Post, the prosecutors say the scam worked like this: "When a bank would sign off on the loans, the five defendants would just pocket the money, which went into accounts they controlled...After the bogus transactions were completed, the properties slipped into foreclosure."
Those charged are: former Suffolk County lawmaker George Guldi; Donald MacPherson, and his wife, Carrie Coakley, who own Arena (MacPherson also publishes The SoHo Journal); title company owner Ethan Ellner; and lawyer Dustin Dente. Guldi said the charges were "BS" while a lawyer for MacPherson and Coakley told Newsday, "Anybody involved in the purchases of these houses were legitimate people. Foreclosure doesn't mean a crime was committed."
