A real estate developer has been indicted on charges of residential mortgage fraud, with District Attorney Cyrus Vance accusing Penny Bradley, 54, of using an Upper East Side building LLC as her personal piggy bank.
According to the indictment and documents filed in court, in 2014, an LLC was formed to acquire, renovate, and sell a townhouse located at 46 East 82nd Street (pictured top).
Bradley was the managing member of the company and was paid a fee of $150,000 to manage the LLC’s money and renovate the townhouse to get it ready for a potential sale.
But according to the district attorney, between 2014 to 2016, Bradley instead stole over $500,000 from the LLC to finance her lavish lifestyle.
This allegedly included multiple vacations, such as ski trips in Montana and Utah and a stay at the Ritz Carlton in San Juan, investments in a restaurant, her own rent, monthly payments on her auto loan for her Range Rover and monthly parking garage fees. In 2015, she obtained a personal loan from Global Payment Services Limited (“GPS”), the district attorney said, to invest in unrelated real estate projects.
To get the loan, Bradley agreed to allow GPS to record a lien against the 46 East 82nd Street townhouse if she failed to pay $2.6 million by its maturity date. She then defaulted on the loan.
The following year, she refinanced the debt from GPS as well as existing debt in the company, two loans from Alpine Capital Bank, allegedly by forging signatures of LLC members so it would like a majority of the members had consented to the agreement with Atlas Corp.
In December, 2017, the LLC defaulted on the Atlas loan for $11.5 million.
“As alleged, Penny Bradley cashed in on her insider position and stole company funds to support her lavish lifestyle,” said Vance. “My office is dedicated to protecting the integrity of our city’s residential mortgage market and holding those who attempt to undermine it criminally responsible.”
An attorney for Bradley declined to comment on the case.
Bradley is charged in a New York State Supreme Court indictment with residential mortgage fraud in the first degree, grand larceny in the second degree, and two counts of forgery in the second degree and criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree.
