Qns. woman in clash over sale of her home
A Queens woman who spent two decades keeping a roof over her children’s heads is now in danger of losing it to people she claims have duped her.
Kathleen Duberry has been fighting in Queens Supreme Court for four years, arguing that the people she met with to agree on a loan modification on her home are actually scam artists trying to swindle her.
“They really took advantage of me,” she said. “They lied to me.”
Those people claim that Duberry, 63, knew full well that she was signing papers to sell her home, on which she owed thousands of dollars in back mortgage payments.
Of the three people and one company that Duberry named as defendants in her compliant, one has already been convicted of fraud in a separate matter. His name is Raj Maddiwar. Maddiwar was found guilty last summer in Manhattan Federal Court of tricking homeowners into selling debtladen properties at a discount. He’s listed as Duberry’s attorney on a contract of sale for her Jamaica home.
She claims in court documents that he didn’t tell her the contract was for a short sale, and that she was led to believe it was for a loan modification. She also questions how she came to meet Maddiwar the day she signed on the dotted line. A short sale of the property would have netted less than the amount of debt against it.
“I went there in the morning. They were in the back room. They came out. Maddiwar introduced himself as my lawyer,” Duberry recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t think you’re my lawyer.’ How did he become my lawyer?”
In her complaint, Duberry, who gets around with a walker and goes for dialysis three times a week, also accused CNM Analytics; its president, Carrmen Mansfield, and real estate broker Roger Hans of acting as secret confederates and violating state home equity theft laws. The complaint was filed in Queens Supreme Court.
She claims in the complaint Maddiwar and Hans were connected to CNM before they became involved with her and it was Hans, not her, who “hired” Maddiwar to represent her. She claims in court papers she did not sign off on the deal even though they claim she did. “I never signed a contract agreeing to a short sale,” she stated in a March 7, 2016, affidavit. “I did not sign the papers that Mr. Hans has attached to his motion.”
Maddiwar also was the attorney for Dairus Griffiths when he apparently signed away his Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. home, which Griffiths disputes and which is being investigated by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Griffiths claimed in a December 2017 sworn statement that he “never appointed any attorney” to handle the sale of his home, though he appeared to contradict himself in a later affidavit in which he said he agreed to use Maddiwar.
Maddiwar maintains his innocence in the Duberry and Griffiths cases and the federal case in which he was found guilty, and described himself as “very honest.” He claimed both Duberry and Griffiths found a U.S. attorney’s office press release about him being charged and used the method of operation described in it to build a case to get back their houses.
“We did nothing wrong,” he said, referring to the Duberry dispute. “My life has already been ruined. … I can’t do business. I’m financially destroyed.” He added that he “had nothing to do with the buyer” CNM Analytics.
A lawyer for Duberry questioned Maddiwar’s comments, noting Duberry filed her suit 13 days before the U.S. attorney’s office put out its press release on the federal case involving Maddiwar. “Duberry’s complaint was filed on May 8, 2015. The U.S. attorney’s press release came out May 21, 2015,” said Duberry’s attorney Christopher Newton. “It doesn’t make sense to me that she would have gone back in time to file the complaint.”
City Finance Department records indicate Maddiwar represented CNM in property transactions dated December 2014 and March 2015.
In January 2015, Duberry had fallen behind on mortgage payments for her house on 165th St. in Jamaica.
According to her complaint, a friend recommended she contact Hans about a loan modification, and she did. Duberry claims Hans promised that he would help her obtain the modification and called her “Auntie Kathleen.” On April 10, 2015, she claims, she met Maddiwar, Mansfield and Robert Mudd, CNM’s attorney.
At that meeting, her suit claims, Duberry was given “papers to sign, but was only shown the signature pages of the papers.”
“Once Ms. Duberry signed the paperwork, things changed,” her lawsuit states. “Hans gave her a check for $3,000 and told her she had 90 days to leave her home.”
The next day, Hans called Duberry to tell her he was sending workers to “clean up the place,” despite the fact her son had already done renovations on her home to rent it out, the complaint states. That day, a man named Devine Dukes allegedly began “destroying” the ground floor of Duberry’s home and began blocking an entrance with garbage.
Hans described the Duberry deal as a “normal transaction,” but refused to answer questions about any prior connections to Dukes, Maddiwar and Mansfield. His lawyer Alisa Sondak said he’s an “innocent party” and declined to further comment.
Mansfield didn’t return calls for comment. Her lawyer said CNM and Mansfield “vehemently deny the allegations,” noting they filed a counterclaim accusing Duberry of fraud. Dukes couldn’t be reached for comment.
Duberry’s case remains active. The defendants deny her claims and have accused her of fraud in a counterclaim.