Man Gets Free 5-Year Hotel Via Loophole, Then Claims To Own The Building

NEW YORK (AP) — For five years, a New York City man managed to live rent-free in a landmark Manhattan hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law.

But prosecutors this week said Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming ownership of the entire New Yorker Hotel building — and tried to charge another tenant rent.

On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with filing false property records. But Barreto, 48, says he was surprised when police showed up at his boyfriend’s apartment with guns and bulletproof shields. As far as he is concerned, it should be a civil case, not a criminal one.

“I said, ‘Oh, I thought you were doing something for Valentine’s Day to spice up the relationship until I saw the female officers,’” Barreto recalled telling his boyfriend.

Barreto’s indictment on fraud and criminal contempt charges is just the latest chapter in the yearslong legal saga that began when he and his boyfriend paid about $200 to rent one of the more than 1,000 rooms in the towering Art Deco structure built in 1930.

Barreto says he had just moved to New York from Los Angeles when his boyfriend told him about a loophole that allows occupants of single rooms in buildings constructed before 1969 to demand a six-month lease. Barreto claimed that because he’d paid for a night in the hotel, he counted as a tenant.

He asked for a lease and the hotel promptly kicked him out.

“So I went to court the next day. The judge denied. I appealed to the (state) Supreme Court and I won the appeal,” Barreto said, adding that at a crucial point in the case, lawyers for the building’s owners didn’t show up, allowing him to win by default.

The judge ordered the hotel to give Barreto a key. He said he lived there until July 2023