NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- A woman was sentenced to 3 and a half to 7 years in prison for stealing approximately $959,000 from nine victims in a fraudulent real estate investment scheme, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced on Wednesday.
Regine Norman, a.k.a., Regine Ellis, 69, was also ordered to pay restitution totaling $842,000, prosecutors said. She pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree grand larceny and three counts of third-degree grand larceny on Jan. 31.
According to the investigation, between May 2018 and September 2020, Norman engaged in a real estate fraud scheme in which she told her victims that she had access to buy properties located in Brooklyn and in the surrounding New York area, at a discount, usually by falsely claiming that she was a member of a private real estate auction.
She then convinced her victims to wire her money for down payments on the properties and after obtaining the down payment, Norman provided her victims with fraudulent contracts of sale, which often included the forged signature of the actual property owner, and never used the funds to purchase any property.
Among the properties, over a dozen were located in Brooklyn, authorities said.
Additionally, the Department of State has no record of any business entity called "NY Private Auction Inc.," the private auction company that Norman claimed to be a member of. Norman provided her victims little information about the private auction, telling many of them that they could not attend or speak to anyone at the auction because only members had access.
The actual owners of the various properties Norman claimed were being auctioned never put their properties up for sale at auction and never retained the defendant as a broker or agent with the authority to buy or sell their properties, according to investigators.
Several victims suspected they had been defrauded and repeatedly demanded Norman return their money. After holding on to victims’ money for an extended period of time, Norman returned the full amount of the stolen funds to four victims using money stolen from more recent victims and paid a portion of the stolen funds to three other victims, prosecutors said.
Norman has not returned any funds to seven of the victims.
"With today’s sentencing this defendant has been brought to justice. The defendant sought to take advantage of Brooklyn’s rising real estate values to steal money from investors. I would caution individuals to carefully consider with whom they invest their savings," District Attorney Gonzalez said.
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