On a June afternoon in 2018, a person named Mickey Barreto checked into the New Yorker Resort. He was assigned Room 2565, a double-bed lodging with a view of Midtown Manhattan nearly completely obscured by an exterior wall. For a one-night keep, he paid $200.57.
However he didn’t take a look at the following morning. As a substitute, he made the once-grand lodge his full-time residence for the following 5 years, with out ever paying one other cent.
In a metropolis the place each inch of actual property is picked over and priced out, and the place inexpensive residences are among the many rarest of commodities, Mr. Barreto had maybe the most effective housing deal in New York Metropolis historical past.
Now, that deal may land him in jail.
The story of how Mr. Barreto, a California transplant with a style for wild conspiracy theories and a typically tenuous grip on actuality, gained after which misplaced the rights to Room 2565 may sound implausible — one other story from a person who claims with out proof to be the primary cousin, 11 instances eliminated, of Christopher Columbus’s oldest son.
But it surely’s true.
No matter his far-fetched beliefs, Mr. Barreto, now 49, was proper about one factor: an obscure New York Metropolis hire regulation that supplied him with many a New Yorker’s dream.
The First Evening
On that summer time afternoon almost six years in the past, Mr. Barreto walked by means of the lodge’s revolving door on Eighth Avenue and entered a foyer centered by a 20-foot Artwork Deco chandelier, a nod to the lodge’s geometric structure.
When it opened in 1930, to nice fanfare, the New Yorker Resort was not simply the biggest within the metropolis but in addition the second largest on this planet. It was an opulent lodge of the longer term, with 92 phone operators, an influence producing plant and a radio with 4 channels in every room.
Right now, the mystique has pale, although the property nonetheless attracts vacationers with its central location. Lower than half the rooms are open to visitors, and the hallway carpet is tattered and lined with brightly lit merchandising machines of sodas and snacks. A lot of the constructing is occupied by followers of the Rev. Solar Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who purchased the lodge in 1976 and made it his group’s headquarters.
Even by New York Metropolis requirements, the room to which Mr. Barreto was assigned was small, slightly below 200 sq. toes. The beds consumed many of the maroon and gold carpeted house. A tiny closet may match a handful of clothes. There was additionally a 42-inch TV with free HBO.
Over the course of a number of latest interviews, Mr. Barreto described what occurred subsequent — occasions that led to a yearslong ordeal for the lodge.
In dialog, Mr. Barreto vacillates between lucid and unstable. He stated he experiences panic assaults and seizures however insisted he had by no means been identified with a psychological sickness — whilst he claimed to be the chief of an Indian tribe he based in Brazil.
A lot of Mr. Barreto’s story is corroborated by years of courtroom data, however one essential second comes from solely his account: On that first night time, he settled into his room, excessive above Midtown, alongside together with his accomplice, Matthew Hannan. Earlier than that night time, Mr. Barreto says, Mr. Hannan had talked about, in passing, a peculiar truth about inexpensive housing guidelines that pertain to New York Metropolis accommodations.
With their laptops open, he claimed, they explored whether or not the New Yorker Resort was topic to the rule, a little-known part of a state housing regulation, the Lease Stabilization Act.
Handed in 1969, the regulation created a system of hire regulation throughout town. But additionally topic to the regulation was a swath of lodge rooms, particularly these in giant accommodations constructed earlier than 1969, whose rooms might be rented for lower than $88 every week in Might 1968.
In keeping with the regulation, a lodge visitor may develop into a everlasting resident by requesting a lease at a reduced fee. And any guest-turned-resident additionally needed to be allowed entry to the identical providers as a nightly visitor, together with room service, housekeeping and the usage of services, just like the fitness center.
The room turns into, basically, a rent-subsidized house inside a lodge.
Regardless of the cheap assumption that what he was enterprise had been orchestrated from the beginning, Mr. Barreto claimed the concept solely took form when his and Mr. Hannan’s on-line search stumbled upon the twenty seventh line of a 295-page spreadsheet titled “Listing of Manhattan Buildings Containing Stabilized Items.”
In keeping with courtroom paperwork, Mr. Barreto left his room the following morning, rode the elevator to the foyer and greeted a lodge worker on the entrance desk. He handed over a letter addressed to the supervisor: He wished a six-month lease.
The worker dialed the supervisor, and after a quick alternate, Mr. Barreto was instructed there was no such factor as a lease on the lodge and that with out reserving one other night time, he must vacate the room by midday. The couple didn’t take away their belongings, so the bellhops did — and Mr. Barreto headed to New York Metropolis Housing Courtroom in Decrease Manhattan and sued the lodge.
In a three-page, handwritten affidavit dated June 22, 2018, Mr. Barreto cited state legal guidelines, native codes and a previous courtroom case in arguing that his request for a lease made him a “everlasting resident of the lodge.” Removing of his objects amounted to an unlawful eviction, he stated.
At a listening to on July 10, within the absence of any lodge representatives to oppose the lawsuit, the choose, Jack Stoller, dominated in Mr. Barreto’s favor. Choose Stoller not solely agreed together with his arguments; he even cited the identical case regulation as Mr. Barreto and ordered the lodge “to revive petitioner to possession of the topic premises forthwith by offering him with a key.”
Mr. Barreto returned to Room 2565 inside days, now as a resident of the lodge — and shortly, as its new proprietor.
The Finance Division
Again of their room days after the ruling, the couple learn Choose Stoller’s ruling time and again. In it, there was no order that the lodge present a lease, no restrict on their keep, no suggestion that hire was due.
However one phrase was talked about all through: possession. Mr. Barreto was given “closing judgment of possession.”
Mr. Barreto stated he known as the courtroom to ask somebody to clarify what precisely that meant.
“You’ve possession,” Mr. Barreto — sharply and slowly stressing each syllable of the ultimate phrase — stated he was instructed. “You’re not a renter. You’ve possession of a constructing.”
And the way is possession of actual property recorded? In New York Metropolis, it’s on the Division of Finance.
With the choose’s order in hand, Mr. Barreto and Mr. Hannan visited the division’s Decrease Manhattan workplaces. Mr. Barreto stated he requested a clerk about placing Room 2565 in his identify — as a brand new house owner would — however was instructed that may be unattainable as a result of the lodge, in contrast to residences, was not break up up in metropolis data by rooms.
The property had one entity on file, the lodge itself, recognized in metropolis data as Block 758, Lot 37. So, citing the choose’s order, Mr. Barreto crammed out paperwork declaring his possession of that.
“If I’ve the suitable to register all of it,” Mr. Barreto recalled pondering, “then I’ll register all of it.”
In New York Metropolis, a change of possession is recorded within the voluminous Automated Metropolis Register Info System, or ACRIS, which holds the true property data for each property. Hundreds of paperwork like deeds and mortgages are obtained and printed day by day, too many for town’s Division of Finance staff to scrutinize earlier than posting on-line.
Mr. Barreto tried repeatedly to file for a deed, however was rejected over varied technicalities. After his sixth try, a clerk instructed him he wanted to contact the sheriff’s workplace. (In New York Metropolis, the sheriff’s workplace is a division of the Finance Division.)
Mr. Barreto stated he spoke to a sheriff’s deputy, an investigator within the division, who requested why he was submitting so many instances. He stated he responded that he had been given possession of the property however was having technical difficulties.
On the similar time, the lodge’s homeowners had filed their very own lawsuit to evict Mr. Barreto, claiming the lodge was exempt from the housing regulation’s lodge provision. Finally, the legal professionals couldn’t produce documentation from Might 1968 to show the lodge’s weekly fee was on the time greater than $88 every week. The choose dismissed the swimsuit.
In the meantime, Mr. Barreto filed for a deed for a seventh time. It was accepted.
On the afternoon of Might 17, 2019, almost a yr after Mr. Barreto booked his one-night keep, he was recognized in ACRIS because the proprietor of the New Yorker Resort, a 1.2 million-square-foot constructing.
Lease Calls for
Mr. Barreto now had a recorded deed exhibiting he had possession of the lodge, however the true and solely proprietor since 1976 was nonetheless the Unification Church.
Mr. Barreto’s subsequent strikes went far past the rights of a now everlasting visitor.
He instantly fired off an e-mail to a lawyer for the lodge, demanding to know in regards to the property’s latest funds, and included a declare that he was owed $15 million in income.
“That fee is late,” he wrote, “and is due instantly.”
A couple of days later, one other demand: The thirty eighth ground wanted to be cleared of visitors. “I have to do an inspection of the constructing with my architect ASAP,” he stated.
The lawyer rapidly responded, “What are you referring to?”
“I’ve possession rights in that constructing,” Mr. Barreto replied. “That’s what I’m referring to.”
He additionally wrote about desirous to make upgrades, together with to the revolving door on the lodge’s entrance on Eighth Avenue between West thirty fourth and West thirty fifth Streets. “That space appears like a conflict zone,” he stated.
Whereas the lawyer scrambled to file a lawsuit to revert possession of the lodge, Mr. Barreto despatched off an e-mail to Wyndham Lodges and Resorts, which manages the property, notifying it that he now owned it. A Wyndham consultant requested for a litany of authorized and gross sales paperwork to be despatched as proof. (They weren’t.)
Mr. Barreto additionally despatched a memo to M&T Financial institution, the lodge’s lender, and requested for all accounts to be put into his identify. (They weren’t.)
Subsequent, Mr. Barreto walked into the Tick Tock Diner, which is linked to the foyer by double doorways. He dropped off a letter addressed to the homeowners. Month-to-month hire checks, he wrote, needs to be despatched to a brand new handle: Room 2565.
One of many diner’s homeowners, Alex Sgourgos, acknowledged Mr. Barreto. Since he had moved into the lodge, Mr. Barreto, together with Mr. Hannan, often ate on the Tick Tock, a ’round the clock restaurant styled as a Nineteen Fifties diner with neon lights, crimson cubicles and a laminated menu. The 2 males typically ordered breakfast, sandwiches and hen entrees, Mr. Sgourgos stated, and all the time paid in money.
“They appeared like unusual guys,” he added.
After studying the letter, Mr. Sgourgos known as the Unification Church, which instructed him to disregard Mr. Barreto’s demand. The couple continued to eat on the restaurant, he stated, and by no means talked about the hire funds once more.
Two days after Mr. Barreto walked into the Tick Tock, the lawyer for the lodge was in courtroom, explaining the state of affairs and pleading with a choose to difficulty an order to cease Mr. Barreto from representing himself because the proprietor.
The lawyer, Matthew B. Meisel, stated his regulation agency companions had “by no means seen such an egregious set of circumstances.”
In courtroom, Mr. Meisel stated he believed that Mr. Barreto was underneath investigation by prosecutors within the Manhattan district lawyer’s workplace, although he didn’t specify for what.
Throughout the nation, it’s not unusual for overworked municipal recorders to just accept property filings underneath the belief that they’re professional, and for actual property speculators to reap the benefits of the system.
However Invoice Lienhard, a lawyer who has represented many victims of deed theft in New York Metropolis, stated he was surprised by the obvious ease with which Mr. Barreto transferred a 41-story Manhattan lodge into his identify.
“Boy,” he stated, “this takes the cake for town’s report division not paying consideration.”
Representing himself in courtroom, Mr. Barreto insisted he had finished nothing mistaken. “As for me proclaiming to folks I used to be the proprietor, I solely did that after I had the deed,” he stated in courtroom.
A couple of months later, the choose issued a ruling: “The topic deed is a solid deed by all accounts,” he wrote. Mr. Barreto didn’t personal the property.
However that was not the top.
In Room 2565
Regardless of the choose’s ruling about possession, Mr. Barreto was nonetheless a authorized resident of the lodge.
His house, Room 2565, is close to the top of a protracted slim hallway that zigs and zags from the elevators. Across the nook is Room 2549, the place Muhammad Ali spent the night time in 1971 after shedding the so-called Struggle of the Century to Joe Frazier at Madison Sq. Backyard.
With no job, Mr. Barreto stated, he spent hours in his room day by day, researching his household’s historical past in Brazil, the place he was born and raised within the southern river city of Uruguaiana. He has an angular, youthful face and military-style haircut and fidgets together with his garments as he talks.
A relative stated that he had excelled at school in Brazil, had by no means gotten into hassle and moved to the US in Nineteen Nineties. As a teen, he was thought of significantly gifted — the neatest baby within the household.
However lately, he developed an obsession together with his family tree, claiming to have uncovered a direct connection to Christopher Columbus by means of Portuguese royalty. In Civil Courtroom, he began to invoke the explorer’s identify — “My household identify ‘Muniz Barreto Columbus,’” he wrote in a 2021 submitting.
Mr. Barreto additionally delved into the Unification Church’s origins on the Korean Peninsula, its increasing financial pursuits on different continents and its enterprise connections with North Korea. He began to imagine that leaders of the church have been sending its earnings, together with from the lodge, to North Korea in violation of sanctions imposed by the US.
In an interview, Mr. Barreto stated that his considerations in regards to the funds of the non secular group turned the primary driver for staying within the lodge. He known as it his patriotic obligation as an American citizen, likening his efforts to somebody having been in a position to cease one of many hijackers earlier than the Sept. 11 assaults.
“I’m sorry I disrupted your try to finance weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. Barreto stated. “It’s Mickey Barreto versus North Korea.”
Whereas Mr. Moon, who died in 2012, was born in what’s now North Korea, his church’s present ties to that nation are unclear; it as soon as operated factories and a lodge there. The church got here underneath intense scrutiny in Japan after the 2022 assassination of Shinzo Abe, the previous prime minister. The alleged killer believed Mr. Abe had ties to the church, which has lengthy been accused of preying on weak folks for donations, in Japan and elsewhere.
Mr. Barreto voiced comparable claims to family, about each the church and his household’s family tree, leaving them confused about whether or not his statements have been tethered to actuality.
“It was one thing that was simply laborious to imagine,” stated the relative, who requested to stay nameless due to sensitivity throughout the household. “I used to be pondering perhaps it’s true, I don’t know. With Mickey, it’s laborious to say.”
A spokeswoman on the Unification Church declined to remark about Mr. Barreto’s allegations, his residency or the lawsuits.
A Knock on the Door
Mr. Barreto had prevailed in two separate courtroom proceedings; he had a proper to a rent-stabilized lease for a room on the New Yorker Resort. He had entry to room service, housekeeping and all of the lodge’s services.
However he refused to signal a lease — or pay hire.
The lodge’s first supply of a lease, in accordance with him, exceeded the authorized hire for a rent-stabilized room. He additionally declined extra gives over time, claiming he was involved in regards to the church’s funds.
Lastly, final yr, the lodge’s proprietor succeeded in courtroom in opposition to him. A choose dominated within the lodge’s favor, citing Mr. Barreto’s refusal to pay or signal a lease. He was evicted in July.
Even whereas that second eviction case had been working its means by means of Housing Courtroom, Mr. Barreto had not stopped portraying himself because the property proprietor. In September, he submitted one other deed exhibiting that the lodge had been transferred as soon as once more into his identify, and that town had accepted it.
The switch triggered the lodge to lose a property tax exemption, leading to a $2.9 million enhance on its property tax invoice.
Again in courtroom, the lodge’s legal professionals urged a choose to carry Mr. Barreto in contempt, and a choose signaled on Feb. 7 that there can be one other listening to within the case.
Per week later, law enforcement officials confirmed up earlier than dawn on the house on the Higher West Facet the place Mr. Barreto had been staying with Mr. Hannan.
Mr. Barreto was arrested and arraigned later that morning in a Manhattan courtroom on 24 counts — together with 14 felony fraud counts — in what prosecutors stated was a felony scheme to say possession of the lodge. Mr. Hannan, who Mr. Barreto stated was not concerned past staying with him on the lodge for a lot of 5 years, was not charged or accused of any crime.
Mr. Barreto is now awaiting trial in State Supreme Courtroom in Manhattan and going through a number of years in jail if convicted. In jail earlier than he was launched on his personal recognizance, Mr. Barreto stated he used his one cellphone name to dial the White Home, leaving a message about his whereabouts.
There was no purpose to imagine the White Home had any curiosity within the case or any thought who Mickey Barreto was. However you can by no means fairly inform with Mickey — he’d been proper as soon as earlier than.
Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.