Convicted Landlord's Deed-Theft Empire Shows How Easily Fraud Becomes Legal Title

A Three-Decade Deed-Theft Operation Ends in Conviction

Joseph Makhani, a 63-year-old Great Neck landlord, let out a guttural howl as handcuffs were snapped on last month, moments after a Manhattan jury took just 90 minutes to convict him of three deed-theft-related felonies. Judge Michele Rodney remanded Makhani to Rikers Island to await a sentencing now scheduled for September. The conviction covers two Harlem brownstones — 107 West 118th Street and 135 West 131st Street — that state prosecutors said Makhani acquired through a "meticulous, multi-year scheme" built on fake names, fake companies and fake addresses.

The two buildings are the visible tip of a much larger operation. New York Attorney General investigators who began examining Makhani in 2015 counted more than 800 deed transactions connected to him and at least 100 corporate entities, and identified 52 additional properties with signs of criminal conduct. Court documents value the empire he built over roughly three decades at $83 million as of 2016, including residential holdings in the wealthy Kings Point section of Great Neck.

The mechanics were consistent, according to trial testimony and public records: identify properties with murky title chains — abandoned buildings, owners who died without wills, estates split among missing heirs — manufacture or acquire a claim, then "cleanse" it through quiet-title lawsuits won by default when true owners never appeared. The roster of people Makhani used included Charles Simon, a notary and pastor who fronted LLCs and brought in opportunities, and Dennis Fullerton, a janitor with limited literacy who signed lawsuit verifications at Makhani's request. Deeds in Makhani-linked transactions sometimes carried signatures attributed to prison inmates, psychiatric patients, dementia sufferers and people investigators deemed "fictitious."

Once title looked legitimate, Makhani monetized it like any other landlord: Flushing Bank lent him $1.2 million against the West 118th Street brownstone on an application stating he had paid $975,000 for a property whose recorded transfer price was $10. He gutted the building and converted it into four market-rate rentals at roughly $3,300 per month. Prior enforcement had barely dented the operation — a 1998 guilty plea for bid-rigging at foreclosure auctions cost him a $20,000 fine, and 2007 Queens District Attorney charges were dropped after his LLCs paid $15,000 in fines. The conviction, six years after the attorney general's office opened its investigation, is the first to stick.

How the Playbook Turned Forged Deeds Into Bankable Title

The Playbook: How a Quiet-Title Default Laundered Fraudulent Paper

The core vulnerability the case exposed is the quiet-title lawsuit. After a questionable deed was recorded, Makhani would move the property into a fresh LLC and sue to confirm ownership. When potential heirs or true owners failed to appear — often because process servers delivered notices to boarded-up buildings in what prosecutors described as "sewer service" — judges granted default judgments, converting contested paper into judicially blessed title.

The Maple Street case shows how slow civil remedy can be in practice. A Brooklyn judge ruled Makhani's 2003 deed "of dubious validity" in 2015, and the city eventually paid $2.3 million in a condemnation for the community garden. Yet the dispute dragged into a 2025 ruling that the deed was "fraudulent," and Makhani still appealed for a 49 percent share. The civil system, designed to resolve competing claims, effectively became a delay weapon.

Banks and Title Insurers: The Monetization Enabler

Makhani's scheme only generated real money once institutions treated him like a conventional investor. Flushing Bank, which had lent to him since at least 2002, extended $1.2 million in mortgages on the stolen brownstone. A bank officer testified Makhani was a consistent re-payer — and the bank itself was insulated by title insurance Makhani paid for. That structure transfers the risk of fraud onto the title insurance system while giving lenders little incentive to question a borrower's acquisition history. The same dynamic that made Makhani creditworthy is what made large-scale deed theft bankable.

Three Decades of Enforcement Gaps — and One Real Reform

The enforcement record is a study in under-deterrence: a 1998 bid-rigging plea involving 25 conspirators and a $20,000 fine, then 2007 charges dropped after $15,000 in corporate fines, with the underlying properties already sold for $1.2 million. New York's 2024 ban on partition actions — passed after Makhani bought a 75 percent stake in Diane Prince's family home for $136,000 and sued to force a $500,000 buyout — closed one tactic. But Prince's family still carries Makhani as a 75 percent owner on paper, and he has responded with a lease strategy intended to put a stranger in the home. Structural vulnerabilities remain: New York requires the City Register to record any deed submitted in complete, recordable form, and default judgments still flow when no one answers a summons.

Who Profited and Who Paid

Concrete losses are attached to named parties: the Prince family's six-decade Queens home remains entangled; the gardeners at 237 Maple Street fought for more than a decade, and their condemnation proceeds remain tied up in litigation; heirs of Germaine Kirton and other last verified owners saw supposedly "fictitious" heirs surface in court records. On the other side of the ledger, Makhani's network collected bid-rigging "commissions" as far back as the 1990s, and lenders and insurers collected interest and premiums on stolen collateral. The conviction, if it survives appeal, finally recalibrates that math.

Closing the Loopholes Makhani Exploited for 30 Years

Makhani's September sentencing is the immediate marker, but the structural vulnerabilities his case exposed operate at a level no single sentence fixes. Specific steps for those exposed:

• Property owners and heirs: check New York City's free ACRIS database for new recorded filings on homes you or relatives own, especially vacant or inherited properties. The scheme typically begins with a recorded transfer that owners only discover long afterward.
• Anyone served with a quiet-title summons: appear or respond. Default judgments — won when true owners failed to show up — are the step that turned fraudulent deeds into bankable title in this case.
• Lenders: Flushing Bank extended $1.2 million against a property whose recorded transfer price was $10, relying on borrower-paid title insurance. Verifying recorded acquisition prices against stated purchase prices would flag the pattern at the underwriting stage.
• Policymakers: two levers would directly disrupt the playbook: identity verification on deed filings for the City Register, and service verification to occupants of record before quiet-title defaults are granted. New York's 2024 partition ban shows targeted reform is achievable.
• Buyers and tenants of Makhani-tied buildings: three properties are currently listed for sale via Weichert, and leasing for at least 10 Makhani-connected buildings has been handled since 2023. Title-history review before purchase, and scrutiny of rent-collection entities, is warranted.