NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A Queens man who managed a Brooklyn affordable housing apartment building was arrested for stealing money from tenants and other frauds, State Inspector General Lucy Lang and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced Wednesday.
Victor Garvin, who was also known as James Gavin, used to work for Marion Scott Real Estate, Inc. which managed Harry Silver Houses, a state-regulated affordable middle-income housing development in East Flatbush.
“New York has a great tradition of setting aside state-regulated cooperative apartments for affordable housing,” said Lang, whose office investigated the case. “Predatory behavior that undermines New Yorker’s right to live with dignity will never be tolerated. We are committed to working with, and are grateful to our law enforcement partners, including Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, the Office of Inspector General for the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security.”
Garvin used his role as property and site manager to swindle thousands of dollars from tenants. In one instance, Garvin took $7,053 in cash by the family member of a resident to cover six months of rent, but instead kept the money without crediting the payments to the resident’s account.
Another time, Garvin accepted a $2,000 deposit for an apartment from another person but did not credit the payment to their account.
A third incident involved Garvin receiving $4,000 from another person as a "maintenance fee" and to "speed up the process" of obtaining an apartment but the apartment was never actually secured nor did Garvin return the money.
Along with stealing from residents, Garvin owned a company called Plighted Construction which was hired to perform interior renovations within the building in early 2020. After the eight weeks of work, Plighted Construction did not pay its employees the $7,450 they were owed nor did the company obtain worker’s compensation at any time during the project.
Garvin was ultimately fired from MSI in February 2020 at which point he filed for unemployment insurance using fraudulent documents and another person’s information, including his social security number.
“This defendant allegedly stole from vulnerable New Yorkers, including pocketing wages meant for his own employees as well as taking money from tenants that was supposed to pay rent or secure an apartment,” said D.A. Gonzalez. “I remain committed to protecting all New Yorkers from this type of conduct and I thank New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang and the Office of the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration for their work on this case.”
Garvin is facing several felony charges including grand larceny and forgery. He is scheduled to appear in court on September 8.
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