Authorities are accusing a Jupiter man and a co-defendant of hatching an elaborate plan to steal a house while they were in state prison. The men then worked with others to illegally get a Dania Beach home and a mortgage to profit from the transactions, investigators say.
Jeffrey Alan Aronson Jr., 34, was arrested Thursday on charges of grand larceny and mortgage fraud in Broward County after he was extradited from Palm Beach County, according to the arrest complaint.
Aronson’s arrest is the latest case resulting from a multi-agency effort by investigators with the Broward Property Appraiser’s Office and Broward Sheriff’s Office. While the Appraiser’s Office has long investigated homestead fraud, Property Appraiser Marty Kiar created a team consisting of economic-crime detectives in 2022 to take on deed fraud. In recent years, that has led to arrests of many suspects in unrelated cases.
“Unfortunately, a home could be stolen while a person is in custody, and an alleged illegal mortgage can be taken out while on probation,” Kiar said. “This goes to show that criminals will stop at nothing to defraud the people of our community.”
As of Tuesday, no defense attorney was listed for Aronson in court records.
According to Aronson’s arrest form:
In 2019, Aronson and another man, Tyrone Jones, who also has been charged, were incarcerated in a halfway house “when they devised a scheme to locate bank-owned properties in the Broward County area and to use the court system to fraudulently obtain homes and make a profit by doing so.”
Aronson was sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 on multiple drugs and weapons charges, and Florida Department of Corrections records show Aronson served three years. For the last six months, he finished his sentence at a halfway house, and was released December 2019.
Also in 2019, Aronson and co-defendant Jones formed a for-profit corporation, according to the complaint. The alleged fraud happened when they got out of the halfway house, which was at a motel in Clearwater, and were on probation, according to Property Appraiser investigator Mike Fisten.
In March 2020, they filed a fraudulent deed indicating a bank handed over title of the Dania Beach house to the for-profit company. In May 2020, they applied for the mortgage and eventually received $130,000, according to the complaint.
In June 2020, investigators allege Jones filed a false claim of lien, claiming he was a contractor who had been paid just $10,000 of an $85,000 bill.
Sheriff’s Office investigators write in the complaint it was “apparent” that the reason was to use mortgage proceeds to pay his company the $75,000 balance, although the company, Jones Remodeling Services, does not exist.
According to the complaint, Aronson was supposed to make monthly payments of $1,415.31 for the mortgage but “never paid one payment.”
Jones got a $75,000 cut of the mortgage in June 26, 2020, and wrote four $5,000 checks to family members and a $22,540 cash withdrawal the same day, according to the arrest report. He then got a bank check made out to himself for $15,000 and made three cash withdrawals totaling $2,000. In July, he made four more cash withdrawals “likely to avoid filing a federal Currency Transaction Report,” according to the complaint. Federal law requires financial institutions to report transactions over $10,000 conducted in a single day.
More cash withdrawals followed, for a total of $63,000 of cash.
According to the arrest complaint, Aronson admitted to investigators to signing documents and splitting proceeds, and provided “multiple text messages” with Jones.
The bank got title back to the house through the courts, Fisten said. But he said the money was gone.
Tyler Mesmer, an attorney representing the U.S. Bank Trust National Association, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he got the home back to his client “immediately” in an expedited court case before Broward Chief Administrative Judge Jack Tuter in June.
“This has become so pervasive in Florida,” Mesmer told the Sun Sentinel, saying his firm is now trying to recover 15 houses in Miami-Dade, Duval, Broward, Orange and Polk counties that were stolen, unrelated to the Aronson case.
“It used to be a one-off kind of thing, once a month you’d see this kind of thing,” he said. But now, the calls are coming “two or three times a week,” he said.
In addition to Aronson and Jones being co-defendants in the mortgage-fraud case, according to court records, the two as well as co-defendants Michael Dupree and Yury Domatov, share additional charges of deed fraud charges to steal the Dania Beach house, Fisten said.
A fifth person involved in the deed-fraud case, a woman named Inesa Florea, is being held at Krome detention center in Miami-Dade, an immigrant holding facility, waiting for deportation to Moldova, Fisten said. The woman pleaded no contest to a burglary charge so she could resolve the case and get home to her children, “but not because she was guilty of anything,” said her attorney, David Braun.
Braun is also representing Domatov, who was arrested at the house last year where he was living. “He’s pleaded not guilty and he’s anxious to get to trial,” Braun said.
Jones is being represented by a court-appointed defense attorney, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Dupree is being represented by a court-appointed attorney, who declined to comment Tuesday.
Link: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/03/12/plans-to-steal-a-home-for-a-big-payout-began-while-they-still-were-in-prison-authorities-say/
