Roslyn Heights Attorney Gets Prison Time for Stealing $1.4M

A Roslyn Heights attorney was sentenced to serve six months in prison Friday for stealing more than $1.4 million, according to Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas.

Steve Weinstock, who has already served a year in jail, was also sentenced to to pay a restitution of $1,227,710.15 and serve five years of probation.

Weinstock was arrested in Oct. 2014 for stealing $720,000 held in an escrow account, as well as selling an East Hills property owned in the name of his law firm and pocketing over $700,000 in proceeds, the DA reports.

“The defendant’s greed knew no bounds and he stole from his clients, his law partner, a mortgage company and real estate buyers who were unaware that there was an unpaid mortgage on their property,” Singas said in a statement. “These brazen thefts are particularly troubling because the defendant was in business with his then law partner for more than 10 years.”

Back in 2014, Weinstock’s former law partner received a package in which Weinstock had included a statement he’d handwritten, stating that there was escrow money missing in the amount of $720,000, and that Weinstock sold an East Hills property without satisfying an outstanding mortgage loan, the DA said.

The former partner knew nothing about these activities and referred the matter to DA investigators. They found that Weinstock had taken the $720,000 placed in an escrow account that constituted separate down payments for two sales of commercial condominium units in New York City, according to the DA.

In addition to the escrow thefts, investigators discovered that Weinstock’s law firm purchased a property in East Hills in 2008, took out a mortgage on the property in 2010, and then Weinstock on behalf of the law firm sold the property in 2013 without paying off the outstanding mortgage, the DA said.

The buyers’ lender paid approximately $608,000 directly to Weinstock’s law firm. At the closing, the buyers paid Weinstock approximately $117,000, in addition to the $50,000 down payment paid by the purchasers at the time of contract – for a total of approximately $775,000 in proceeds from the sale, according to the DA.

A forged Satisfaction of Mortgage was filed in the Nassau County Clerk’s office to conceal an outstanding mortgage loan amount of approximately $485,000 on the property, the DA said.

Even after the closing, Weinstock continued to make payments on the outstanding mortgage loan without notifying the lender or the buyers that a lien for the property had not been satisfied. The balance of the loan at the time the scheme was revealed was approximately $483,000. The outstanding loan is not included in the total amount stolen by Weinstock as part of the scheme, according to the DA.

Weinstock used the stolen funds for personal and professional expenses, including substantial loan repayments, credit card payments and cash withdrawals, the DA said.

He pleaded guilty in April 2015 to four counts of second-degree grand larceny, second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing.

The clients who were victims of Weinstock’s thefts will be receiving full restitution of $370,000 and $350,000 each from the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection of the State of New York.

Image via NCDA