A New Yorker successfully lived in the iconic New Yorker Hotel building for half a decade without paying a single cent in rent — but the jig is up.
Police arrested Mickey Barreto last week and charged him with filing fraudulent property records after attempting to claim homeownership of the hotel, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said Barreto, who skirted rent payments by exploiting a little-known local housing law, tried to charge another tenant in the building rent.
For the Manhattan district attorney, it was the last straw.
“As alleged, Mickey Barreto repeatedly and fraudulently claimed ownership of one of the City’s most iconic landmarks, the New Yorker Hotel,” Alvin Bragg, Manhattan district attorney said in a statement.
Barreto’s residency at the hotel dates back to 2018 when he first learned about New York City’s Rent Stabilization Code, which grants tenants who live in individual rooms in buildings built prior to 1969 the right to request a six-month lease. Having bought a room in the hotel for the night, Barreto determined that he was, in fact, a tenant.
However, when he requested a lease from the hotel, he was promptly evicted.
Barreto sued the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, who bought the hotel in 1976. Despite the initial denial by a judge, the case escalated to the state Supreme Court. In the end, Barreto won his appeal by default because the building’s owners didn’t show up for the trial.
While the hotel was ordered to give Barreto a key, the two parties never agreed on a lease term. As Barretto couldn’t be evicted, he lived at the hotel until July 2023 without ever paying rent.
The DA said that over the years, Barreto has falsely portrayed himself as the hotel’s owner and attempted to profit from the building. This included registering the hotel under his name with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection as part of an effort to transfer the hotel’s bank accounts to himself, the DA said.
In 2019, the Unification Church also sued Barreto for representing himself as the hotel’s owner on LinkedIn and uploading a forged deed to a city website. The case is ongoing, and in the interim, Barreto has been instructed to abstain from asserting ownership of the building.
Business Insider reached out to Barreto through his company, Mickey Barreto Missions, but didn’t hear back before publication.
“I never intended to commit any fraud. I don’t believe I ever committed any fraud,” Barreto told The Associated Press. “And I never made a penny out of this.”
When reached for comment by BI, the NYPD directed questions to the district attorney’s office.
