Ex-lawyer faces deed theft charges in Queens & Brooklyn

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Sanford “Sandy” Solny, a disbarred attorney, is currently on trial in Downtown Brooklyn for allegations of deed theft. He is accused of unlawfully acquiring the titles to properties owned by several Black and Brown homeowners through a real estate fraud scheme that prosecutors say spanned more than a decade.

According to the charges, Solny allegedly posed as a trusted financial “fix-it man” to his clients but ultimately stole their properties.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office alleges that Solny conned homeowners who were in financial difficulties. According to the accusations, clients who visited Solny’s office at 3813 13th Avenue were struggling with mortgage payments and facing potential foreclosures. Solny reportedly assured them he could facilitate a short sale by negotiating with their mortgage lenders to allow the property to be sold for less than its market value, thereby preventing a foreclosure from appearing on their credit records.

A woman named Wabny Frazier testified that Solny took over a building she and her husband purchased and were planning to renovate and move into. They wanted to move to the house with their two little girls. The witness has a master’s degree in business, bachelor’s degree in accounting, and minor in economics; works for J.P. Morgan Chase as a data reporter; and has even taken occasional real estate courses. However, while on the witness stand, Frazier was unable to recall when she had signed important financial documents that had her name on them. At one point, she explained her confusion about documents she had signed by stating that she had put a lot of information about the loss of her property out of her mind. “I had to box it up and tuck it away to survive,” Frazier explained.

Frazier said she and her husband met with Solny in his office. “What was your understanding of what was supposed to happen at this meeting?” an assistant district attorney asked her while she was on the witness stand. “My understanding is that, um, he would help to facilitate a short sale.” “When you say ‘he,’ who are you referring to?” “Sandy.” “And when you say a ‘short sale,’ what is your understanding of what a short sale is?” “A negotiation with a bank to accept partial payment on whatever is owed on the property.”

Frazier and her husband wound up signing numerous documents while at Solny’s office. The “game plan,” she testified, was that she and her husband were “to sign over the deed to Sandy so that he would be able to be in contact with the bank and we would not have to be in the middle, per se.”

The building had rental tenants who were delinquent in their rent payments, which contributed to the owners’ foreclosure situation. Solny had promised to help with the tenants as well — to collect the rents until the short sale was completed, which was supposed to be within a few months.

The short sale meeting took place in December 2012, but although she called and texted Solny for months and later years after, Frazier never heard back from him about the supposedly completed short sale.

Targeting victims who were in foreclosure

Solny’s current trial is expected to continue until the end of February. In the meantime, anyone sitting in the court can listen to the tales of everyday New Yorkers who worked hard to purchase homes in the city but ended up in financial difficulties. Each one was encouraged to reach out to Solny for assistance, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office claims, but Solny used businesses he owned in Borough Park to “steal deeds, possess those properties, and economically benefit from” them. The DA’s office claims that Solny targeted “victims who owned properties that were in foreclosure.”

There is a history to the current trial: Solny had been indicted in Queens back in 2017 for a broader series of deed fraud cases. The Queens district attorney’s office claimed in a press release that Solny and 10 other defendants were charged with “preying on New York City homeowners in financial distress and defrauding them into signing over their properties.” Solny pleaded guilty to a felony in the Queens cases. Five deeds he had stolen were voided and returned to their rightful homeowners, a Queens DA spokesperson said: “$100,000 in restitution [was returned] to the victims and an additional $100,000 in forfeiture funds. He was placed on a monitor, but that has since expired. He also received five years’ probation, which has also expired.”

Solny’s law license was suspended in April 2012, and he was disbarred on Jan. 5, 2023. James Kousouros, the criminal defense attorney hired to defend Solny, told the AmNews that his client is maintaining there was no fraud committed.

“If you’ve heard the testimony, we are maintaining that there was no fraud here … let’s see how the trial pans out. I mean, honestly, it sounds to me, based on your questions, that it will likely be a one-sided report … but … I think that if you have listened to the victims’ testimony and understood just where they were coming from, I think you’d maybe take a different view … our position is there was no fraud. And our cross-examination of the victims is simply to elicit [that] certainly with some of them, people … took loans, defaulted a couple of months later, and acted the way they acted …”

Been burned left and right

When Gaoussou Ouedraogo came to the U.S. from Burkina Faso at age 25, he could speak French, Mandingo, Fulani, Arabic, and German, but his English was a little rough. To strengthen it, he took adult learning classes, got a job washing cars, started making deliveries on bikes, and finally saved up enough money to take the test and get a New York taxi driver’s license.

As a taxi driver, Ouedraogo was making more money, but he was living in a rental that his landlord refused to take care of. A real estate broker asked Ouedraogo why he kept renting instead of buying a property. “I told him, ‘No. I’m going back to Africa.’ He said: ‘Do not mix going back to Africa and buying property in America: It’s two different things. Buy and live in it. That’s better for you.’”

When a family friend, Patrice Sawadogo, also from Burkina Faso, came to the U.S., Ouedraogo partnered with him to purchase a property they could both live in. Toward the end of 2002, Sawadogo and Ouedraogo purchased the two-family house at 729 Eldert Lane in Brooklyn. Since they both drove cabs, one in the daytime, the other at night, they shared a unit and rented out the other. They made renovations to the basement before moving to the building and renting out the other apartment.

The two managed to purchase another house on Dumont Avenue and a third at 406 E. 21st Street, but they eventually started having issues with tenants and fell behind on their mortgages.

Sawadogo’s wife told him about Solny after a neighbor mentioned his services to her.

“I don’t know what he told my partner,” Ouedraogo told the AmNews. “He said my partner had to sign the deed over to him for him to process the short sale.”

Sawadogo said he was shocked when Ouedraogo called to tell him 729 Eldert Lane was up for sale. “We were looking to have a short sale,” Sawadogo said in an interview. “When we arrived at [Solny’s] office, we were asked to sign the papers. We didn’t know anything about this issue. Later, we found out when Gaoussou asked me if I had started selling the house. I said no, we were over there for a short sale.”

During the court trial, Kousouros stressed that despite the two jointly purchasing the property on Eldert Lane, only Sawadogo’s name appeared on both the deed and the mortgage. If Sawadogo transferred the deed to Solny, his lawyer seemed to imply, it had no financial effect on Ouedraogo.

Ouedraogo sees it differently and is awaiting justice in this case. Having Solny’s name on the deeds for their properties at 729 Eldert Lane and 406 E. 21st Street has hurt their financial reputations and taken away their homes. They have also each lost thousands in rental income.

“For me to trust anybody on that kind of deal again, it’s going to be a while, because I have been burned left and right for it, and the justice system is not prevailing; the justice system is not working at all,” said Ouedraogo. “Let me put it this way: If it was me as a Black man who did that crime, right now I’m behind bars. There’s no excuse for why they’re not locking [Solny] up, no excuse that it’s taken them that long.”