Trial begins in housing fraud case

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The founder of a nonprofit stands trial today on criminal charges that he forged the names of dead people on property deeds in order to steal their houses.

Federal prosecutors have charged Duane McKinney, president of Brotherhood of Men Inc., with using the organization to steal 14 properties and sell nine of them for a gain of $770,000. Co-defendant Joe D. Liles, a notary public in Maryland, is accused of notarizing the dead people’s signatures.

McKinney, 35, faces up to nine years in prison if convicted. Liles faces nearly three years in prison.

The case began in 2006 when an Arlington County police officer stopped to assist McKinney after his 2002 BMW stalled on the side of the road. The officer discovered that McKinney had an outstanding warrant on a charge of simple assault, and searched the car. Inside the trunk, police found a duffel bag stuffed with $159,040 in cash.

McKinney told police that the money belonged to Brotherhood of Men, a nonprofit registered in D.C. whose mission was to assist disadvantaged youth with job training and advice about fatherhood, according to court documents. The nonprofit acquired the money by obtaining deeds on properties that the organization would then fix up and sell at a profit, McKinney told police.

But FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigators found that the property owners were dead at the time of the transfer or the owners said they had not signed the deeds, according to court documents.

To gain control of the property, McKinney used quitclaim deeds, a document in which a property owner passes a claim to another person, investigators said. It’s usually used by family members and holds little validity in court.

After Liles affixed his notary public seal on the deeds claiming to have witnessed the owner personally sign them, the documents were filed with D.C. and Maryland deed recorders so that title searchers would be misled into believing McKinney owned the property, authorities said.

McKinney has been sued in civil court by one family who claim he told them that they lost their properties through a tax sale. The residents said they paid McKinney $200 to be released of any responsibility for the property and later learned that McKinney sold the property for $175,000, according to the suit.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com

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