Man Tries to Steal the New Yorker Hotel from Korea’s Unification Church

This whole story sounds like something out of the Onion:

For five years, a man managed to live rent-free in a landmark New York City hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law.

But prosecutors say Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming ownership of the New Yorker Hotel building in midtown Manhattan — and tried to charge another tenant rent.

This month, he was arrested and charged with filing false property records. But Barreto, 48, says he was surprised when police showed up at his boyfriend’s apartment with guns and bulletproof shields. As far as he is concerned, it should be a civil case, 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 boyfriend.

LA Times

This guy was getting free rent at a $200 a day hotel through a legal loophole for five years and still got greedy and tried to claim ownership of the entire hotel:

Manhattan prosecutors acknowledge that the 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, purporting to transfer ownership of the entire building to himself from the Holy Spirit Assn. for the Unification of World Christianity, which bought the property in 1976. The church was founded in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Barreto then tried to charge various entities as the owner of the building, “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 water and sewage payments, and demanding the hotel’s bank transfer its accounts to him,” the prosecutor’s office said in a 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 Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg.

You can read more at the link, but essentially a gay guy uses incompentent New York government to live rent free in a landmark New York hotel for five years and then tries to steal hotel from a notorious religious cult.