NYC NOW - How an Alleged NYC Real Estate Scammer Stayed in Business Despite Years of Complaints

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Finding an affordable apartment in New York City is hard enough. WNYC and Gothamist reporter Catalina Gonella spent months investigating allegations against David Michael, a man who describes himself as a real estate adviser. Dozens of renters say he took deposits for apartments they never got, then disappeared when they tried to get their money back. She explains how the alleged scheme worked and why small claims court offered little relief. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everyone, we're coming to you today with a special investigation from our newsroom. And just a heads up, this episode contains some curse words. I want to tell you about this day in November of last year. Okay. I'd been looking into all of these allegations from different people who said that they'd been scammed by this one guy who was showing them apartments that they wanted to rent. Hello. Hi. Hi.

And so I went to the address that is on the Business Guard. given them. I'm a reporter with WNYC and Gothamist. Okay. I'm looking for David Michael. David Michael. David Michael. That's you? Yeah. Nice to meet you. Pleasure. What do these people say about how this guy allegedly scanned them? They say this man named David Michael asked them to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to take apartments off the market, basically delist them while they applied and secured their spot. And they tell me that he promised them that they would get their money back if they didn't get the apartment. Sometimes they changed their mind or they weren't approved, but they weren't able to get their money back, even when they sued him. A lot of people

say that they're trying to serve you in small claims court and they can't find you. You found me easily. So obviously I wanted to ask him about these accusations. Do you plan on paying them back? But at that time, he wouldn't answer my questions. Please step out of my business. And he threw me out. I am not answering questions. So you're aware that you've gotten several. judgments, right? I'm not sure. After you, ma'am. From WMYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. Every year, thousands of New Yorkers go looking for an apartment they can actually afford. And if your credit isn't great, if your income isn't steady, or if you need a place fast, your options, they're pretty limited. Sometimes that desperation can leave people even worse off. Reporters

Katalina Gonella has spent months investigating the allegations against one man who describes himself as a real estate advisor. Dozens of people have accused him of stealing their deposit money, and they say they've hit nothing but dead ends when they turned to the authorities for help. I get the call, I think like three months later, saying there's no money. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting my money back. He just took advantage of a desperate person. I needed a place to live.

How did you even get into a story like this? Last year, I got a tip about a woman who said that she'd been caught up in this sort of wild ordeal. Just tell me, like, your name, your age, where you live. Just a quick little, like, bio. Yeah. I'm Clara Ray Natkin. I live in Queens, Sunnyside Queens. I have to say my age.

Let's just say she's in her mid-30s. I'm a makeup artist, and I am a visual artist. I do ceramics and work in all different aspects of the makeup industry. Oh, yeah. Now in 2022, she's going through a breakup, and she needs a new place to live. I had to move pretty quickly, and I was looking for my own apartment. She had finally saved enough money, but as we all know, finding a place in New York City is really hard. I'm going through it right now, and...

Yeah, it's awful. It's pretty tough. Plus, she works these freelance jobs. She sells her art. She teaches. But she doesn't have the kind of income. history on paper that landlords might want. I'm in a really, like, desperate place where I'm like, I need an apartment.

I don't have credit because I work so many different jobs. So that's what I was running up against because in New York now, it's like you have to make 800 times the rent or whatever the fuck. FYI, she likes to curse a lot. I was like hesitating on telling you not to curse because like I want you to. Yeah, no, I want you to like express yourself the way that you do, but also like it is public media. So I'll have, yeah, you're having a lot of bleeps.

Sorry. So she starts looking for listings that seem like black of credit isn't a problem. And she finally comes across David Michael, who seems like he's a little more lenient. He didn't have, like, strict rules about needing certain things. How much was it? And what did you think of the space? I think it was around 2000 a month. It was one bedroom. It was fine. It was all things consider the places I've lived here, it was fine. I wasn't being picky. What did she know about this guy, David Michael? Not a lot.

She says that he had a few listings online and this real estate company with a storefront in Sunnyside Queens called the Pyramid Group. Do you think that him having like a brick and mortar office gave you some confidence or Yeah, I mean there were people in the waiting area. It seemed fine. He seemed completely legitimate business wise. Long story short, she ends up signing a lease and sending him money for the deposit and first month's rent.

How much are we talking here? 3,500. So then I pack all my shit. I'm trying to lock down a date that I can get the keys so I can schedule movers. He tells me a date. I'm texting him to confirm whatever. He doesn't respond. He's not responding.

So at this point, she's panicking. Like the day before, the movers are supposed to, like, I need the keys, you know? And then if he finally gets back to me and he's like, we need to push it back. The current tenant is refusing to leave. So then my ex and I at the first. time. He has the brilliant idea. He was so smart that he's like, we should just go knock on the door of the apartment and be like, why are you leaving? I was supposed to move. Whatever. So this girl answers the door. And I was like, uh, what's going on? Like, I'm supposed to have

moved in here. I signed a lease last, like, whatever. She was like, I just moved in today. She's like, I just signed a lease for this apartment. And I was like, what the fuck? She was like, what the fuck? Great reminder. Oh, sorry. Oh, you're good. You're good. Well, I don't know. know how else to say that one. We just, we stood bewildered. And we, we both realized that he had us both signed the same lease for the same apartment. She moved in before I did. So I signed a lease for apartment that wasn't available. What did David Michael say about Clara? I got an email from him

contesting Clara's story. He said it was actually the landlord who decided not to rent to her. But Clara showed me text messages that she had with him, and they match her account of him telling her that it was the tenant who wasn't leaving. I also spoke with the woman who answered the door that day, and she also confirmed Claire's story. They both signed leases for the same apartment. So then I immediately email him and I say, I'm like, I'm aware of the situation. Can you just give me all the money back that I've given you? I have to cancel the movers, and then you have to give me money back for the fee. and everything. And how does he respond? So I've seen the emails. He agrees to give her the deposit money back,

plus add even more in for all of her trouble. Pain and suffering, right? Like he said, he was going to give me an extra thousand dollars for the inconvenience. I was like, great. But then days go by, and she hasn't heard from him. Then before she knows it, it's been months, and she still doesn't have her money. Wow. She says she tries going to his office. She sends a friend to go pick up the check. That doesn't work out. Both Clara and David, Michael say the friend got angry because the check wasn't for the amount he expected. Three and a half years later, she still doesn't have her money. I have worked so hard to save up that money.

And it was like every penny, like it was already so hard for me to have gotten to the point where I was like secure enough to even do this confidently. And I just, I just had the gut feeling that I was like, this is going to fuck everything up. Because then after I lost all that money, I had to find another apartment. So you get this tip. You hear Clara's story. What did you dig up on David Michael? One of the first things I did was reach out to the New York Department of State's office. That's the office that licenses real estate brokers.

And the spokesperson there sent me these administrative court decisions that showed that David Michael had been stripped of his license more than a decade ago. Wait, what? After 15 people filed complaints against him. Can you even show apartments if you don't have a real estate license? According to the city and state, if you're advertising apartment listings, if you're collecting money on behalf of others for them, anything like that, you need to be licensed. What were you thinking when you learned all of this?

Okay, so I'm a day of reporter, which means I typically cover breaking news, quick story, and that's what I was going to do with Claris' tip. But then I kept finding all these other people. My name is Vanessa Bukario, who claimed that they'd been scammed by David Michael and the pyramid group. He really messed me up. Like, it was a big loss for me. There were complaints about him on local Facebook groups.

I'm Adrian Heyman. On Reddit. Honestly, I was so traumatized by the whole experience because he fucked my life up for like months. So I started sending people messages. My name is Sally. And your last name? And it kind of just snowballed.

When did you first come in contact with David Michael? I was looking for an apartment and I found a listing on Craigslist. Most people found his listings on Craigslist. It basically said that I don't need a high credit score or income, stuff like that. I've seen some of his ads. A lot of them say no credit, no problem in big capital letters. My issue is that I don't have great credit. In most cases, their stories differed a little bit from Clara's because they said they didn't even get so far as signing a lease.

My name is Sarah Kahn Torres. A lot of them say Michael asked him for money to hold an apartment, basically take the listing down. He charged a $300 deposit. You take it off the market. That's what in real estate terms is known as a good faith deposit or earnest money. Is that even legal? No, so that became illegal in 2019. You can only take a deposit.

once a lease assigned. He didn't tell me anything about this being non-refundable or anything of that sort. And in fact, a lot of people like Adrian say that he told them that the deposit was refundable if things didn't work out. But then they say that they didn't get the apartment for a variety of reasons. I end up being convinced to send him a deposit of about $1,500 to him directly on Cash App. And he texts me and he's like, the landlord didn't end up. going with you. So I reached out to him.

Sally says the whole no credit, no problem thing just turned out to not be true. I gave him $1,500. And then after I gave him the money, he was like, yeah, your income is too low. Sometimes people like Vanessa just changed their minds. Like I don't want to take this apartment. It didn't even have like a kitchen, just like a little tiny little space. It was very inappropriate for me and my children to live in. But when they tried to get a refund from him, all but one.

said they weren't able to. I said, so can you please return to $1,600 because I didn't take the apartment? And he said, no, that money is mine. And I said, he pretty much said good luck getting your money back. I spoke to 15 people who all had stories about losing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to David Michael. My name is Katjuska Russo. The first time was $500. And then he asked for another $500.

So 1,000 total. Right. Toward the end of it, I could pretty much. finish their stories for them. My name is Kevin Brown. I knew what they were going to say before they even said it. Tell me about how you first got in contact with... Craigslist.

That's the story. So yeah. David and Michael disputes these claims. He sent me an email saying that any allegations that he stole money are false. And that his business has successfully helped a lot of tenants and landlords. and that that far outweighs the complaints against him. But the people I spoke with say their experiences with him really set them back. At the time it affected me, of course, because I had given birth.

My son was three months old. I was going through a divorce. I had a three-year-old daughter. So I needed every dollar. I even begged him. I cried to him. I said, how could you do this? Like a single mother.

And I don't know what happened with him after that. So no credit, all the problems. Exactly. I could have been homeless, you know. I'm lucky I got family in a city that's short on housing and where people are already struggling. He's completely taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable people. What did people do in these situations? I mean, do you go to the police?

Well, some did try the police route. People told me that they went to their precinct, thinking maybe police could escort them to his office or at least file a police report. But they said police told them, we can't help you. This isn't a police matter. So I bugged the NYPD about this for months asking them, you know, is this how it's supposed to work? And they told me they had just one complaint about David Michael.

And in that instance, they determined that it was a breach of contract and that the right thing to do was to just refer the person to small claims court. Let's do it. We, you and I, went to the court building, Queens, because I wanted to show you how many people have sued David Michael there. I wish I knew architectural styles so that I could describe it, but it's basically a concrete building with big glass windows. It definitely looks like a court building.

There are these computers in the hallway. It looked like they were decades old. and definitely functioning that way. The mouse. Is it working? No, the mouse is not working. So this is the thing. This is city government.

But what they do have going for them is that they have way more information about local lawsuits than you'll find online. They have this system that isn't uploaded to the internet. So we type in his name. Can you make the screen larger? Just hit Maximize? Absolutely.

Yeah. What we're going to do is David. Under last name, we'll go with Michael. Searching. Oh, what? D dozens on dozens, cases on cases on cases. This is crazy. There were at least two dozen in total.

The oldest was from 2012, and one of the more recent ones was scheduled for a hearing. The day we were there. And so here you can actually see some of the people that I spoke to in my story, right? You see Clara Natkin, Adrian Heyman, Sally Ganny. So I tracked down some of those people whose name came up on that screen. I wanted to know how did this process work for them? So nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I'm Brenna Ramirez says she gave David Michael $1,600 to hold a one-bedroom listed on Craigslist in 2024. She showed me this receipt that she says she got from him, and it says it was, quote, 100% refunds. Where are we walking to right now? So we're walking to 40th Street, and that's the apartment he took me to. We went to the building that she never got to move into. It's this small three-story brick building in Sunnyside. Yeah, what was it like in there?

I mean, it looked like a normal apartment. It was a little, like, disheveled because it looked like somebody had left in a rush, but it didn't look like it was in terrible condition. Did Brenna spot any red flags going into this arrangement? It's funny you should ask that. She got about the biggest red flag that you can get. She says when she went to send him the $1,600 on Zell, by the way, her bank, Chase, immediately tried to stop her.

And then Chase called me and was like, hey, this guy is like, we get a lot of reports about him. And I'm like, okay, well, I know who he is. Like, I am just trying to get an apartment. So I still went ahead and did it. And I was kind of like, well, he's been in this neighborhood for a bit. I know where to find him. I can keep him accountable to a degree.

In hindsight, she says she could not have been more wrong. According to Brenna, David Michael told her she'd been denied. What did he say about why you were getting rejected for the apartment? Oh, he said my like income wasn't enough and my credit score wasn't enough. But when she tried to get her money back, she says finding him became really difficult. I kept trying to contact him and I didn't really hear anything. And then finally, I kind of just like staked out his office. Now, this is a really big problem when you're trying to sue someone, even just in small claims court, which is what Brenna ultimately did, right?

Because if the court can't find the person you're suing, you have to serve them what's called a notice of claim yourself. In person yourself, right? In person. You'll find you have to do a lot of things yourself. in small claims court. And a number of people I spoke with said they really struggled to find him. You said he had a brick and mortar storefront. Was he not there?

It closed sometime between like 2024 and 2025. That's what the people I spoke to told to me. They would go there and just find an empty storefront. And Brenna says when she finally did reach him through text, he told her his company, the pyramid group, had moved. I was like, where is your office? I will go to you, tell me where to meet you. And so he gave me this Park Avenue one, this address in Manhattan.

I went to this address. Testing. It's on the corner of 56th Street. It's this really big 19-story glass office building. Hi. It's the Paramood Group's listed address on Google Maps. I'm Catalina. I'm a reporter with WNYC and Gothamist.

I spoke to someone at the front desk there. I was wondering, I'm looking for a company that's listed. at this address called the pyramid group. They said that they'd never heard of this company or David Michael, just wasn't in their computer system. Oh, floor one, it says. Metropolitan Tower, is that this tower? No.

This is the first. All right. And is there a David Michael? The hurdle? No. It's like you're chasing a ghost. The guy at the front desk was confused. So what did Brenna do?

So she actually tried something that I heard several people say that they tried. tried. My friend, very kindly, acted like a customer to meet up with David Michael. So they would have a friend pretend to be interested in an apartment. Set up an appointment and then boom, serve him the court papers, letting him know he's being sued. It took her two weeks for him to finally respond. And they set up a time and she went to serve him. But the man she says she met claimed to be named Alex Michael. And Alex did not accept the serve notice.

Now, I have no idea who this was, but David Michael's middle name is Alexander. Right as soon as she left, David Michael texted me and was like, you didn't get me, ha ha. Which means he must have looked at it and picked it up after we left. Now I've seen this text

and he followed it up with a laughing emoji. I asked David Michael about Brenna's allegation. He didn't respond to that specific question. Brenna was able to get her lawsuit moving in small claims court, but as I've learned from her and all of these other people, finding him is just the beginning of a really long and convoluted journey. He just took advantage of a desperate person. His ads are all like, don't worry about your credit.

Like immediate approval, like, I'll take care of it, which looking at it now is very predatory. And like, yeah, there were red flags and I took a risk, but I think I was just in a situation where I felt like I had to. I needed a place to live. Coming up, why it's so hard

to have a happy ending in small claims court. They're like, if he's closed the bank account or if their money isn't in there, you're out of luck. There's nothing we can do. And what happened when one renter took his complaint to local prosecutor? It pisses me off because he's still working and they say they don't have enough evidence now.

When it's going to be enough then? That's after the break. Catalina, before the break, we heard from people who say a man named David Michael took their money in exchange for apartments that they never got. They also told you it was really hard to find him to bring him to small claims court. What happened when some of these people were able to bring him the court? Well, I spoke to 14 people who sued him. Ten of them got judgments against him in small claims court. But David Michael didn't show up to those trials.

Now, in order for a lawsuit to move forward in small claims court, the court has to have decided that somebody was properly served. But he told me he didn't even know about those cases. So these 10 people got what's called a default judgment that basically says, David Michael needs to return X amount of dollars to this person. They actually even usually include interest for the amount of time that has passed. Okay, so things are looking up. Yeah, you might think they got their money back.

Right. That's not at all what happened. Tell me about your time since then. It's been an ordeal. So this all started, for me at least, with Clara Nacken. That's the person who sent the tip. that I talked about, she went through this whole legal process, you know, putting together her evidence, serving him.

Plus, you know, all the days I had to take off work to go to court. She waited like a year for her hearing. And then finally, in 2024, she presents her a case to the judge and she gets that judgment. And that's when I realized that they don't even help you get your money back. So courts don't actually enforce the judgments. That is up to, you know, that's. you, the person who won the case. How does someone do that?

That's a question that a lot of people had. Most of them really thought that the court would find David Michael and get their money back. But that wasn't the case at all. They were told by the court, you have to go hire a city marshal. So I have to spend more money. Exactly. So city marshals are these kind of quasi-public officials. They run private businesses, but they have the authority to track people down and enforce

court judgments. There's just like a list of a whole bunch of them. Like, how do you even choose? So I tried to research each of them to be like, okay, which one's the most, like, threatening, you know? Because I wanted, like, the baddest one I could find. And I have to agree to give them a certain percentage if they get me my money back. And I have to pay like $25 in cash. It had to be exact change. Okay, so I actually didn't know this when I was first reporting this story, but you get your judgment. You hire this marshal. Now it's up to you to tell the marshal where this person's money is. What?

So it's not even enough to tell them, you know, I won this judgment. This is David Michael. This is the address that I have from, you know, when I served him. No, you have to know exactly where they keep their money. How am I even supposed to know that? Okay. So one way to find out is to fill out what's called an information subpoena. And those are these forms that you've sent to different institutions like banks or utility companies to try to get the information that they have.

on the person that you're looking for. That sounds really hard. Yeah, but Clara had a refund check that David Michael had given her but canceled before she could actually cash it. So she gave that to the city marshal. And they're like, if he's closed the bank out of account or if their money isn't in there, you're out of luck. There's nothing we can do.

And I was like, all right, I already know this is going to happen. So obviously they tried to take the money and I get the call, I think like three months later saying there's no money. there's nothing we can do. Did they give you any more guidance from there? No, absolutely not. Nobody ever tried to help or care. If the small claims process is this difficult,

what about local prosecutors? Can they help people in situations like this? So I did meet one person who went down that route. I'm in that I'm 29-ish. He also found David Michael on Craigslist. He was looking for a space in Woodside to open up a nail salon. My parents, they own already too. So they were like shutting down the places because they're retiring.

They're getting old. So they told me, yeah, you can get the equipment and you can open your own spot. He says David Michael showed him a second floor apartment that he could use as a commercial space. He actually took a short video of the showing. You can hear David Michael speaking in Spanish and English. I'm going to send you the list. Bueno, Bonito barato, no exist. I think the first, like, red flag that we had is he told me,

oh, I don't have the keys for the apartment. So I'm going to open with a credit card. So I was like, what do you mean you don't have the keys for the apartment? And it was like, yeah, the owner forgot to give me the keys. So I was like, okay. Have you spoken to any of the owners that you've looked into? So I've actually tried reaching out to a bunch of them because a big reason that people trusted David Michael and felt that these rentals were legitimate is because they were standing in them, you know? It wasn't just this online exchange.

But the owners that I could identify either didn't pick up the phone or didn't want to talk to me. So did Enrique actually get to the point where he paid a deposit? He did, yeah. How much? $3,000. That's a pretty penny. David Michael, when he saw my bank statements, he got really excited. He even told me, why you had like that amount of money being that young?

And I said because I work really hard. At the time, I was working in two different jobs, full-time jobs. And Rieke had been really excited to start his own business. But then he says that he and his mom go to meet with David Michael and the owner of the building to sign the lease. And my mom told me something is, you know, off because he gave me a lot. lease that you can buy it on staples. And by that, you mean it didn't have any details or what was it missing?

I was missing how much I'll be paying per year and taxes and how much they will increase every one year or every two years. And he asked me for $16,000. $16,000 up front. Yep. And then my mom was like, there's no way that you're going to give. him $16,000. So I've seen text messages that show that Enrique and David Michael went back and forth over

the amount. Then David Michael messages Enrique to say that the landlord was backing out. And Enrique's understanding at this point is that he's going to get his $3,000 back. He says that's what David Michael told him back at the beginning. Then I text them like, hey, I need my money back. he sent me, is like a season deceased, something like there? And Liga showed me this form. It's a liability release.

And as far as I can tell, David Michael has given them to most of the people that I've spoken to once they ask for their refund. And what it basically says is I'll give you your money back if you agree not to sue me or my business. And when I read the document, it was $2,500. I was like, it's missing $500. So he called me and he was like, that will be like, a gift because I waste my time on you.

Did he use the word gift? Yes. Like, there is no way that I'm going to give $500 for nothing. David Michael confirmed to me that he only offered Enrique $2,500, but Enrique ultimately decided not to accept that. The first thing that I did, I went to the police station and this officer, he told me, like, what happened? I told him, he's refusing to give me back my money.

And he told me, there's nothing that we can do. You can take him to court. Enrique does take David Michael to court, but we've just heard all of the complications that come with that process. So he also starts filing complaint after complaint. Every agency that you can think exists in New York, I made a complaint. He reported it to the state attorney general's office. They told me he was one of four complaints they received against David Michael. They told Enrique that they would try to mediate to try to get his money back.

He also reported it to the city's consumer worker protection agency. I did it with the FBI. It's like, you know, internet crimes because he's working through Craiglitz. I made a complaint with Craigliss. I was about to report him to the fucking MTA. He also goes to the Queens District Attorney. There's a housing and worker protection bureau there that's supposed to handle things like this. And he hands over a bunch of material that sort of,

binder that all of the people I've spoken to have put together for their small claims court cases, but this time for a criminal complaint. What evidence did you give them? I give them the lease that he made me sign the document that he sent me saying that I cannot sue him the bank statement. Showing that payment of $3,000, there's also text messages back and forth between them. I send the conversations that we had, David, Michael and I, All the people complaining about him everywhere, basically. Meaning all the complaints about David Michael online,

all those bad reviews that I had also come across earlier, and accounts from other people he had spoken to who also said that they'd been ripped off. I wanted to understand how a district attorney might tackle a complaint like Enriquez. The Queen's district attorney's office didn't make anybody available for an interview, but I did speak to a former prosecutor for Queens and Nassau counties. And she said that last thing, that list of multiple people saying they've been ripped off by the same person. That's what a prosecutor would be looking for, a pattern that someone is using deceitful practices over and over to defraud multiple people.

And Enrique felt he could show that. If you have one complaint against one person, I get it. But if you have like five, ten complaints about the same person, the same LLC, the pyramid group, something is off. And so what were your expectations? Honestly, I was waiting for something like, hey, I'm sorry, this happened to you. We're going to get in touch with him,

or at least we're going to try to be in touch with you and get more information because I was getting more information daily. But just a week after Enrique filed that complaint, he got a letter from the Queen's DA's office. Can you read that for me? Dear Mr. Nervais, please be advised that this office will not be pursuing criminal charges and this matter given the much higher burden of proven criminal cases. It is unlikely we'll be able to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It basically told Enrique that they couldn't convince a jury.

that David Michael was guilty of anything. Can you read the first line of the second paragraph? Because of the nature of this case, it is more likely that you will receive the outcome you desire about moving forward with a civil suit with a criminal charge. So what are they telling you there? To sue him with the small claims court?

That's what I did. How did that make you feel in the moment when you read it? Like there washed your hand. and, you know, it's not a problem. Look for somebody who cares. And it feels like shit, honestly. That's what it pisses me off, because he's still working. And they say they don't have enough evidence now.

When is going to be enough, then? What hope do you have that you'll get your money back? I'm pretty sure I'm not getting my money back. I'm 100% sure. We, of course, want to hear David Michael's response to all of the stuff you laid out. Catalina, just how much contact have you had with him? We've been in touch.

At first, he was very down to talk. He answered the phone and told me he wanted to cooperate with our story. He didn't agree to be recorded in that conversation. He did answer some questions over email, though. Like I said before, his point is that he's worked with a lot of renters and landlords and that these are just a few unhappy customers. After I contacted him, he also said he's willing to resolve these issues with people who say he still owes them money. But the whole time I was reporting, I really wanted to talk to him in person about everything everyone had said.

Testing, testing. Then when I talked to Brenner Ramirez, who we actually heard from earlier, we met outside of David Michael's old office in Sunny Suss. And it had actually reopened as Sunnyside mailbox. It was like a packing, printing, and shipping all in one store. It looks like a Western Union now, right? Yeah, he told me that he was turning it into a shipping store. And when she looked inside... Just in a point, I think that's him in there.

He's back in his old locale. That is interesting, okay. So a few days later, I went back to try and talk to him. David? Huh? Mike. Mike. How can I help? Phrasing? Skating? Sorry? No, no printing. I'm Catalina. He said his name was Mike at first, but then he confirmed he was the David Michael. You'll hear me laugh at times. I was a little nervous. I've spoken to a lot more people since we lost spoke.

Would you like my counsel's number? Sure. Yeah. Well, so you don't want to answer any questions. No? Nothing's changed now from before. Well, you have a shipping and printing. store I see. Is this your store? Have a lot of businesses. Oh yeah? What's what you have to do with anything? Well, this was the pyramid group, right? Yeah, it moved to 430 Park Ave. People I've spoken to

say that they can't find you there. Can't find me at 430 Park Avenue? Right. Okay, I wouldn't be on Google Maps if it wasn't a real place. But this storefront just opened, right? No. How long has it been open? Ma'am, I think we're done here. Good luck with your endowments. Okay. I'm done

answering questions. If you could please step out. If you don't mind. But you've gotten served several judgments. So first I wasn't served. No. I was served. Okay. Please step out of my business. People stopped being able to find you. I mean, come on. You found me. Do you not want to leave? Well, I want to ask some more questions. You have a good day though. Do you plan to pay them back? Now you're blocking the entrance with your foot on camera. He wrote me an email shortly after that. I got it the next morning. He was saying I had harassed him and barred me from ever stepping foot inside his business ever again.

We only spoke over email after that. So what should people even do to avoid being scammed in apartment deals in the first place, but also what should they do if they feel that they've been scammed in the past? Well, the best advice I have based on all the conversations I had throughout my reporting, I also spoke to legal and real estate experts is to first make sure the broker that you're working with is licensed. The state has a database where you can just type people's names in and if they don't come up, they're likely not licensed. Also, don't send more than an application fee that should only be $20 before a lease is signed. And also, don't use direct cash apps to pay for anything.

Zell Vimmo Cashab. Exactly. A real broker won't have you do that. And then if it's too late and you realize you've been defrauded, it is important that you file complaints with your local district attorney. You know, if they are ever going to criminally charge the person who did this, they will need to be able to establish that pattern. Catalina, this has been a wild ride. Thanks so much for you reporting. Thank you, Jene.

That's WNYC's Kathleen Nogonella. And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time. What are you doing for work right now? I'm bartender. Yeah, and I apply for the NYPD, so cross and fingers. Oh, wow.

So if you, I wonder what you would do if somebody came into the precinct. Oh, I'm going to tell him to there's nothing that we can do. Go to court. And good luck.