Brooklyn Landlord Who Stole Beds And Broke Stoves Sentenced: DA

EAST NEW YORK, BROOKLYN — The owner of an East New York home for recovering addicts will serve up to three years in prison for stealing his tenants' furniture, breaking their stoves, and causing one resident to collapse in a city street, prosecutors said.

Yury Baumblit, 67, was sentenced to jail time after he pleaded guilty to illegally evicting 10 tenants from his three-quarter houses between April 2014 and March 2016, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

Baumblit, of Back on Track Inc., a company that managed housing for newly sober residents, bullied his tenants so that he could evict them without a court order, prosecutors said.

A resident in Baumblit’s three-quarter house at 456 Glenmore Ave. in East New York watched as Baumblit and his workers stole mattresses from his tenants’ homes, broke their stoves so they couldn’t cook, and locked them out during the day, prosecutors said.

Another tenant found out he’d been evicted, after six months of paying rent from his disability payments, when he returned home to find his belongings on the street and someone else in his bed, prosecutors said.

The man tried to sue Baumblit and get the bed back, but Baumblit refused to obey a court order demanding he return his tenant’s property, and the man slept on a floor for more than four months, said prosecutors.

A third resident, recovering from a recent surgery, collapsed in the street and was hospitalized for five days because Baumblit refused to let him stay at home during the day, prosecutors said.

Baumblit pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud and was sentenced to one to three years in prison in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Wednesday, said prosecutors.

The Brighton Beach man will also serve up to five years for a separate Medicaid fraud case that was handled by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, prosecutors said.

“This defendant preyed on vulnerable people who desperately needed a home,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

“He did that to line his own pockets and deserves to be in prison for his fraudulent and cruel actions.”

Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn District Attorney's office