Trump Pardons Hartford Landlord Convicted Of Defrauding Government: Feds

HARTFORD, CT — A landlord of multifamily housing properties in Hartford from New York who was convicted of fraud was pardoned by President Donald Trump earlier this month.

According to the U.S. Justice Department's website, Trump signed an executive grant of clemency on Jan. 15 for Jacob Deutsch, 58, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

In January 2024, Deutsch was sentenced to more than five years of imprisonment and four years of supervised release and was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.

Arrested by federal authorities in 2021, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud affecting a financial institution on July 12, 2022, and June 1, 2022, respectively.

Jacob Deutsch's brother, Aron Deutsch, 63, of Monsey, N.Y., pleaded guilty to the same charges at the same time.

Aron Deutsch was sentenced in January 2024 to five years of probation and ordered to pay a $1 million fine. He was not pardoned by Trump.

Jacob Deutsch’s criminal history includes a wire fraud conviction in the Eastern District of New York stemming from an insurance fraud scheme. In October 2003, he was sentenced to three months of imprisonment for that offense.

According to then-U.S. Attorney Vanessa Roberts Avery, the pair engaged "in a wide-ranging mortgage fraud scheme involving 24 mortgage loans on numerous multifamily housing properties in Hartford totaling nearly $50 million."

According to court documents and statements in court proceedings, Jacob Deutsch and Aron Deutsch worked at B H Property Management, LLC, a property management company that manages numerous multifamily housing properties in Hartford.

Federal authorities said, from September 2016 through May 2021, Jacob Deutsch, who ran the day-to-day operations of BHPM, and Aron Deutsch engaged in a scheme to defraud government-sponsored financial institutions.

Those institutions included the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Co. (Freddie Mac), the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

They did so, authorities claimed, by providing the institutions with false information, overstating the value of multifamily housing properties managed by BHPM in connection with loans secured by those properties.

As a result, Jacob and Aron Deutsch were both arrested on May 19, 2021.

Trump, himself, is a convicted felon who was found guilty in 2024 of falsifying business records as part of the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal before the elections that year.

To see Trump's full pardon of Jacob Deutsch, click on this link.

From Jan. 9, 2024: 'Hartford Landlords Sentenced For Mortgage Fraud: Feds'