Inside the nightmare of the Long Island deed scammer who allegedly defrauded Hamptons families out of millions

A Long Island man promised dream homes.Buyers say they got a nightmare.Michael O’Sullivan had a pitch that was hard to refuse.

He’d track down desperate homeowners who had abandoned their Hamptons properties after the 2008 financial crisis, offer them cash for their deeds, then resell those properties to buyers hungry for a deal in one of the country’s most expensive property markets. What followed, according to more than a dozen lawsuits, were years of alleged fraud, threats and financial ruin, Curbed reported. O’Sullivan founded Hampton Dream Properties after attending a real estate seminar where he learned about the coming wave of foreclosures. His strategy was simple. “I had to track them down; they’d be hiding out in the mountains in North Carolina or something,” he told Curbed.“And so I would go to North Carolina, I would go to South Florida, and I would get a certified bank check.

And I would say, ‘Sell me the deed to your house.’”A former associate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the math was straightforward. “You offer somebody who’s about to lose their house $25,000, $15,000 cash to sign over their deed, they’re going to say ‘Yeah, I’d love to,’” the associate told the outlet. The scheme turned predatory, the associate alleged, when someone suggested selling deeds to new buyers even though the underlying mortgages hadn’t been resolved. “He sort of figured out how to take advantage of it from both ends,” the associate said.“Like an evil, f–ked-up genius.”Plaintiffs allege O’Sullivan sold properties he didn’t own, misrepresented title status, held onto deeds to take out high-value loans and funneled buyer payments toward new acquisitions instead of clearing the debts on properties he’d already sold. Many victims were Latino first-time buyers with limited English who were told, according to the lawsuits, that they didn’t need their own attorneys.Diana, a Colombian housekeeper who has...