New York Attorney General Letitia James and Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that a Long Island man was sentenced to three to nine years in prison Friday for leading a deed theft ring that resulted in five homes being stolen from vulnerable Queens residents and saw them earn more $1 million in ill-gotten gains.
Marcus Wilcher, 48, of Carll Drive in Bay Shore, pleaded guilty in May to grand larceny in the second degree in Queens Supreme Court for his role in leading the crew following an investigation by the Attorney General’s office.
“New Yorkers should never have to fear losing their homes to deceitful schemes like deed theft,” James said. “Marcus Wilcher and his associates targeted elderly and vulnerable New Yorkers with a predatory scheme that inflicted significant financial and emotional harm.”
Wilcher and his crew, which included disbarred attorney Anyekache Hercules, former mortgage broker Stacie Saunders, and fellow co-conspirators Jerry Currin and Dean Lloyd, targeted homes owned by seniors.
Wilcher located three homes in Jamaica and St. Albans, which were in a rundown condition and had absentee owners. Saunders then marketed the homes to investors at prices significantly below market rates for quick sales. After an investor expressed interest in purchasing a home, Wilcher would secure personal information about the real owners, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, to create falsified driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and bank cards. Wilcher and Saunders then found people to impersonate the legitimate owners of the properties at contract signings and closings.
The crew members divided up the sale proceeds from the three homes, amounting to over $1 million, with Wilcher taking the largest cut, transferring over $500,000 into various bank accounts he controlled. In December 2022, James announced the arrests and indictments of Wilcher and his crew.
“New Yorkers work their entire lives to secure a home, and deed theft threatens to rob them of the generational wealth they have built for their families,” James said. “I am proud of my office’s work to put a stop to this fraud displacing our most vulnerable communities, and I will continue working to keep New Yorkers safe and secure their homes.”
Following the indictment, the Attorney General’s office uncovered two more home thefts committed by Wilcher, also in Queens, including an East Elmhurst home he stole from a senior woman by using forged documents and by creating a fictitious character — the owner’s purported son — to facilitate the transaction.
According to the charges and plea agreement, the victim owned a home on 106th Street in East Elmhurst since May 1974 and was not living there in autumn 2022. On Nov. 1, 2022, Wilcher filed a deed with the city’s Department of Finance, transferring the property from its rightful owner to an LLC, with a sale price of $320,000.
To facilitate the property transfer, Wilcher obtained identifying information about the rightful owner, such as her date of birth and Social Security number, and then created a forged New York state driver’s license in the owner’s name. Wilcher also created an email address purported to belong to the owner and invented a character named “Paul,” who was supposed to be her son. Wilcher — operating as “Paul” — hired an attorney to represent the owner and her “son” and forged a power of attorney so the lawyer could represent the owner in real estate banking and business transactions.
After an investigation, it was determined that the victim did not grant power of attorney to the lawyer, and her signature on the documents was forged. The lawyer hired by Wilcher said he had never met the property owner and communicated with someone he believed to be the victim’s son.
The phone number purported to belong to the owner was actually Wilcher’s number. The contract of sale for the property was electronically signed using a fake email address tied to Wilcher, and the proceeds from the sale of the house were transferred to bank accounts belonging to Wilcher.
“We will not allow scam artists to get away with targeting homes thinking they will make an easy profit through deed fraud,” Katz said. “I created a Housing and Worker Protection Bureau to prosecute bad actors who want to steal people’s most valuable asset, their home. Thank you to the Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James for their assistance in this prosecution.”
Wilcher pleaded guilty on June 21 to grand larceny in the second degree before Queens Supreme Court Justice Leigh Cheng, who sentenced him to three to nine years in prison on July 12. The sentence will run concurrently to the sentence Wilcher also received after a guilty plea in the deed theft case brought by the Attorney General’s office in May.
