Three tenants at a Mitchell-Llama complex in Coney Island were collared this week on allegations that they submitted forged paperwork to illegally pass on their succession rights.
The same type of scam was at the heart of an alleged bribery scheme by board members at the complex that was unearthed in May.
The latest accused tenants at the Luna Park complex, Leonid Dakhe, 64, Tatyana Langman, 71, and Sabina Berkovich, 40, were arraigned Wednesday on multiple counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, first-degree falsifying business records and one count of second-degree making an apparently sworn false statement.
They were released without bail and are due back in court in December, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
“Their alleged actions deprived honest, law-abiding home seekers a chance to obtain affordable housing, so we will now seek to bring these defendants to justice for their respective roles in this alleged corrupt scheme,” Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said in a news release.
The residents were caught via an ongoing investigation into Luna Park board members who were indicted in May on charges that they pocketed $870,000 in kickbacks to fast-track wealthy homebuyers’ applications for some of the 6,000 coveted Mitchell-Llama units at the complex.
The units are intended for low-income New Yorkers and are the subject of miles-long waiting lists.
The board members, Anna Treybich, Irina Zeltser and Karina Andriyan, were caught running a succession-rights scam — they allegedly doctored applicants’ paperwork to state they were related to outgoing tenants.
In the tenants’ alleged scheme, Dahke is accused of turning in false documents — including a forged birth certificate — to live at the complex falsely stating that his brother lived at Luna Park and that Dahke had been living at the complex for a year.
Langman and Berkovich allegedly turned in phony documents to falsely claim that they were mother and daughter, the DA says