How an alleged NYC real estate scammer stayed in business despite years of complaints

Adrian Hayman needed an apartment fast. It was December 2024, and after a painful break up with his girlfriend, it was time to get out of the place they shared for almost a year in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Heartbroken, he began perusing Craigslist in hopes of saving money. After a couple of apartments fell through, he found an ad for a studio near Prospect Park. The price: $1,600 a month, a bargain for the area.

Hayman texted the phone number, and he said a man named David Michael immediately called him back, offering to show him the apartment right away.

“I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is cool,’” Hayman said in an interview.

The next day, he said, Michael arrived at the Brooklyn address in a black Mercedes-Benz SUV, wearing a nice watch and “looking like a wheeling-and-dealing, successful businessman.”

The studio, however, was shabby — located on the second floor of what Hayman described as “one of those old, weird mansions” just south of the park. It didn’t have a fully functioning kitchen, he said, “ just a sink, no stove, ancient fridge that probably didn’t work.”

“It was kind of like, not that great of an apartment, so the price kind of made sense,” Hayman said.

Michael assured him the unit would have a working kitchen by the time it was ready to lease, he said. Hayman liked how spacious it was, the big balcony overlooking the street and the fact that it came with a parking space in the driveway. He decided the place would do.

Before they left, Hayman said, Michael asked him to pay a deposit of one month’s rent to “save your spot” and push his application to the top of the landlord’s list.

Hayman didn’t know it at the time, but so-called “good faith” deposits or “earnest money” — payments to brokers or landlords to show interest in an apartment before signing a lease — were made illegal in New York in 2019, with lawmakers arguing at the time that the practice was predatory and ripe for abuse.

But he said Michael was charismatic and friendly, even sympathizing over his breakup, and that Michael assured him that if he wasn’t approved, he’d get his money back.

“ He’s like, ‘I got some people interested, but I want to give this to you,’” Hayman said.

Text messages show Hayman sent Michael $600 through CashApp on the spot and then scraped together another $1,000 he sent later that evening.

“Received,” Michael texted in response.

Ten days passed. Text messages show Hayman messaged Michael multiple times and began to grow frustrated by his lack of response. Hayman said he wondered whether he’d been ripped off, until Michael finally set up a meeting with the landlord and told him he would get the keys to the apartment if he signed a lease that day. Hayman loaded a bed frame into his car and brought a friend to help him move.

But the meeting didn’t go as Hayman had expected. He said the landlord seemed to be looking at his application for the first time: She didn’t know his name, he said, appeared to be unfamiliar with any of the documents he’d provided and said more people were lined up to view the apartment.

Hayman left without keys, the bedframe still in his car. Two days later, Michael texted him saying he’d been rejected. He also asked Hayman to sign a form agreeing to accept a refund $500 less than what he’d paid, while also waiving his right to sue Michael or his company, according to a copy of the document.

Hayman refused and threatened to get a lawyer.

“You agreed to return the full amount of 1600,” he told Michael in a text. “If you had let me know the [deposit] was non refundable I’d get that, but you’re blindsiding after the fact.”

“It’s non negotiable,” Michael replied.

Hayman went to small claims court a few months later to try to get his money back. After the clerk read through Hayman’s forms, he pointed to a woman seated at a bench inside the Queens civil court building.

“‘Go sit next to her. She's suing the same guy,’” Hayman remembered the clerk saying.

That woman was Brenna Ramirez. Like Hayman, she said she also sent Michael $1,600 to hold an apartment listed on Craigslist, which she said he never returned after their deal fell through.

Together, they’re among more than a dozen New Yorkers who said they gave Michael deposits for apartments they never moved into and were never refunded. Although the details vary, their stories share many common themes.

There’s the makeup artist who said she gave Michael a $3,500 deposit and the first month of rent on a Queens apartment before finding out someone else had moved in, and never got her money back. The city newcomer who described never recovering a $2,800 deposit after Michael accused him of using a fake bank statement in his application. And the 31-year-old mom who said Michael did not refund $1,500 after he rejected her application because her husband’s income was too low.

Most said they felt desperate to land apartments in the city’s soul-crushing rental market, and that they ignored warning signs because they lacked good credit scores or proof of steady income, both typically crucial for winning over a landlord.

“New York City is one of the only places in the country that really relies on this system of brokers for getting apartments. So brokers are in this really powerful middleman position,” said Kyle Giller, an attorney at the nonprofit New York Public Interest Research Group who advises people on how to navigate small claims court cases. “Sometimes brokers take advantage of that position.”

The word “broker,” however, does not appear on the business cards Michael shared with his clients. Public records show the state stripped him of his real estate license over a decade ago after multiple people filed complaints against him alleging fraud. He is not listed in the state’s directory of licensed brokers and he describes himself as a “real estate advisor” on his cards and emails.

I tried to speak with Michael several times in-person as well as on the phone and in email. He asked me to leave when I found him at his place of business in Queens. Later, in an email, he contested the allegations against him, saying any claims that he stole money “or otherwise engaged in criminal conduct” are false.

He told me his business has assisted many tenants and landlords, and that the feedback he’s received from clients has been “overwhelmingly positive.” He acknowledged that some renters had paid him good faith deposits and that he had not returned the money in some instances. After I contacted him, he said he was willing to resolve matters with people who claim he owes them money, but did not specify whom he was talking about.

Several landlords involved in the deals either did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment or refused to speak on the record about their business arrangements with Michael.

Hayman, Ramirez and other renters said it was unclear which agency they should turn to for help in getting their money back. The New York state attorney general’s office accepts consumer fraud complaints, and a spokesperson for AG Letitia James said her office is looking into four complaints against Michael, but would not elaborate on the details.

Some renters went to the police, hoping officers could intervene or, at a minimum, take a police report. But an NYPD spokesperson said the police department refers people who report complaints about rental agreements or contract disputes — such as whether a deposit is refundable or not — to small claims court.

Court records show at least 24 people have sued Michael in small claims court in Brooklyn and Queens, where he once had a real estate business in Sunnyside with a storefront office called The Pyramid Group. The lawsuits go as far back as 2012.

Ten of the people I spoke with secured judgments against him. In an email, Michael said he was unaware that some of those small claims cases had proceeded. But small claims courts require that defendants be properly served before cases are allowed to move forward, and they do not help plaintiffs get their money back once they get a judgment in their favor. Only one renter said she had her deposit returned, but through the landlord and not Michael.

“ I tell people that winning is not the end of their journey,” Giller said. “It is really difficult to get your money back.”

The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection issues fines to landlords and their agents who illegally charge broker fees, and encourages anyone who believes their consumer rights were violated to file complaints. When another renter, Enrique Narváez, filed a complaint with the agency about Michael refusing to return a good faith deposit, it referred him to local prosecutors, where he also filed a complaint.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office said it does not confirm the existence of investigations. In a written statement, Katz encouraged potential victims to file complaints with her office’s Housing and Worker Protection Bureau. But the DA’s office told Narváez that it would not pursue criminal charges because of the difficulty in proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

A pattern

Ramirez was a law student when she applied for one of Michael’s Sunnyside listings on Craigslist in January 2024. The apartment, she said, was a furnished one-bedroom near the 7 line. But she said the biggest selling point for her was that a good credit score wasn’t needed. She described her own credit at the time as “mediocre.”

Michael invited her to his office on 40th Street in Queens, Ramirez said, and they walked together to the apartment just a couple of blocks away. She said the experience felt as legitimate as any of the other apartments she’d found on Craigslist before — and she was in a time crunch to get out of her living situation.

“He let me take pictures and things, so that also made it feel more legit and like he didn't really have much to hide,” Ramirez said.

So when her bank called to flag the $1,600 she sent Michael to hold the place as suspicious, she decided to go through with it anyway. Besides, her receipt for the deposit said it was “100% refundable.”

“I was kind of like, ‘Well he's been in this neighborhood for a bit, I know where to find him. I can keep him accountable to a degree,’” she said.

By her own admission, she could not have been more wrong.

Instead, she unwittingly joined a club of sorts.

In addition to meeting Hayman in the Queens courthouse, she found others who claimed Michael had swindled them. The state court’s online database listed several people with active lawsuits against him, and a pattern emerged in their stories of elusive apartments and unreturned deposits.

That pattern began to take shape more than a decade ago, according to court records. They show that Michael briefly obtained his brokers license in 2014 only to have it revoked a short time later.

In 2015, New York’s Department of State launched an investigation into Michael’s conduct after it received 15 complaints about him, according to an agency spokesperson. Among other allegations, officials ultimately accused him of acting as a broker before he was licensed and failing to return a renter’s deposit after a lease fell through.

In sworn testimony, a woman named Maria Anzurez told investigators Michael had kept $1,600 she paid as a deposit for an apartment in Woodside, Queens, that never materialized. Just three days before move-in, she was told the previous tenant was refusing to leave, she told investigators.

When Anzurez asked for her deposit back, Michael informed her it was “all gone,” according to her testimony. She said she "repeatedly asked for her deposit back,” and Michael repeatedly refused.

“The respondent engaged in misconduct that demonstrates he lacks the moral character required of a real estate salesperson,” the state said in its complaint. Michael never showed for hearings in the case, records show, and the Department of State said he failed to cooperate with its investigators.

In November 2015, a judge determined that Michael “demonstrated incompetence and untrustworthiness,” in violation of New York Property Law, and stripped him of his real estate salesperson’s license. A year later, court records show he tried to pay a $1,250 fine connected to a different complaint, but the check bounced.

Michael did not respond to questions about his real estate license or Ramirez’s allegations against him. But Anzurez’s story echoed her own experience years later.

After Ramirez paid her deposit, she said Michael oscillated between saying the one-bedroom wasn’t ready and that he was working on evicting a current tenant. He ultimately concluded that Ramirez’s income was too low, she said, and that she would need a guarantor. She decided to take her money and go with another apartment.

What followed was a game of real estate cat and mouse.

Ramirez said Michael initially agreed to a refund over the phone. But according to a statement she submitted to the court, he stopped responding to calls and texts.

“ I couldn't pin him down to talk about the refund. So finally, I just stood outside of his office and waited for him to come in,” she said.

When she cornered Michael at his storefront, she said, he handed her a “release of claim” nearly identical to the one he’d given Hayman. In one loquacious 200-word sentence, it promised to return her money while absolving Michael and his company of any liability and waiving her right to sue.

It appeared to be a standard part of Michael’s practice. Almost all of the people I spoke with had nearly identical forms they said Michael asked them to sign.

Ramirez signed it, had it notarized and delivered it back to Michael’s office, she said, and then he was back to ghosting her.

‘Stay FAR away’

If you haven’t already done a quick Google search at this point in the story, there are a mix of online reviews — some positive, some from people saying they’ve been wronged by Michael and his company, and warning others to be careful. One user on a local Sunnyside Facebook group told a story similar to Hayman and Ramirez.

“He is pretending to be a broker,” she wrote. “He requests a deposit then doesn’t go through with the apartment process and refuses to give a refund.”

Local Reddit forums feature multiple comments advising people not to trust him.

“Stay FAR away. You’re dealing with a guy who calls himself Michael, right?” one response reads. “He is not licensed and he’s being sued by a number of people.”

I also interviewed people who described tense confrontations with Michael.

Angi Kim recalled running into Michael on the sidewalk near his office in 2020, months after she tried to get him to return a $300 deposit on a studio apartment in Sunnyside. After the two “exchanged words,” Kim said Michael spit at her.

“I f—ing spit back,” she said. “I don't think he was expecting me to.”

Sally Ghany said in an interview that Michael also spit at her in 2019 after she tried to get a $1,500 deposit back.

“ I was walking to work and I bumped into him and he did that,” she said. Unlike Kim, she said she kept her distance after that.

Michael denied that he spit at anyone.

Angry reviews are one thing. An official citywide tally of all rental scam complaints is harder to come by.

Mercedes Padilla, a spokesperson for the New York Department of State, where renters can file complaints about brokers, said the agency doesn’t track rental scams as a complaint category.

Department records show that the number of real estate brokers who have had their licenses revoked has remained relatively low compared to the total number of licensed brokers and salespeople in the state — between four and 10 revocations every year between 2021 and 2026 — but Padilla noted that a revocation can happen for a variety of reasons.

The FBI tracks real estate crimes — a broad category that includes rental scams, but also deed theft and other offenses. Bureau data shows the number of reported real estate crimes in New York stood at 839 last year, a roughly 80% increase over the last decade. Total losses for victims in 2025 stood at over $15 million.

Hard to find

Several people who claimed they were scammed by Michael said they went to the police to complain about him, hoping officers could take a police report or escort them to Michael’s real estate office to help get their money returned.

All said the police told them it wasn’t a criminal matter, and that they should take their case to small claims court.

Each borough has its own small claims court, which are meant to offer New Yorkers a low-cost way of resolving legal disputes without an attorney. The process requires you to submit a simple form, collect reams of documentation to support your claim and then attend hearings in civil court.

But you also have to physically serve the person you’re suing with a notice of claim. And many of the people suing Michael said that proved challenging. His Pyramid Group storefront closed sometime around late 2024 or early 2025, according to several of his former clients who have searched for him.

At some point, he began providing a new business address on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

“I went there because I was like, ‘I guess I just have to corner this man down again,’ and the address was fake,” Ramirez said. She spoke to the receptionists and said they had no idea whom she was talking about.

When I visited the building, a receptionist at the front desk said no one by the name of David Michael had an office in the building, and there was no record of a company called The Pyramid Group. The company’s address is still listed there on Google.

As Ramirez ran out of options, she said she set up a type of simple sting operation. A friend would make an appointment to view an apartment, pretending to be interested in one of the units Michael was advertising and then hand over the court papers.

“It took her two weeks for him to finally respond, and they set up a time and she went to serve him,” Ramirez recalled.

But when her friend served the papers, she said the man showing her the apartment claimed to be “Alex” Michael, not David Michael, and he refused to accept the documents.

Michael’s middle name is “Alexander,” according to a copy of his driver’s license he shared with several clients, though it’s unclear exactly who the person showing the apartment was.

Later that afternoon, Michael sent Ramirez a text. It was a laughing face emoji and the words “Not me!”

But she said the court accepted that Michael had been served and she was able to move forward with her lawsuit.

Small claims, big headache

Serving someone with a notice of claim is just part of the battle. In fact, winning a case in small claims court may not even be the hardest part. Ramirez, Ghany and several others obtained judgments against Michael because he didn’t show up for hearings, court records show. Michael said he was unaware of the court proceedings.

It’s the next step that is typically the most challenging.

“They don't even help you get your money back,” said Clara Natkin, who won a small claims lawsuit in 2024 over a $3,500 deposit she paid Michael for a one-bedroom in Sunnyside.

In an email, Michael said he canceled Natkin’s refund check because of an argument between him and a friend of Natkin’s who came to his office to pick it up.

Natkin said she took multiple days off work to collect all of her evidence in a binder to present to a judge, notarize documents and attend hearings. She expected the process of getting her money back to be simpler once she won. But the courts do not enforce judgments, and she soon learned that the burden of physically getting her money back was on her.

“When you win, you’re essentially getting a piece of paper that says you won the case and the defendant owes you this amount of money,” said Giller, the attorney with the New York Public Interest Research Group. “But collecting the money that you’ve won is a difficult process.”

His group conducted a survey of small claims plaintiffs in Albany County in 2021 and found that while 80% of people had won their claims, 75% of them were not able to get their money back from the people they had sued.

After Natkin won her judgment, she received a long list of city marshals — a group of independent public officials who have the power to seize property, money and garnish people’s wages.

“How do you even choose?” Natkin asked herself. “I tried to research each of them to be like, OK, which one's the most threatening? Because I wanted the baddest one I could find."

The system also requires you to know where the person you’ve successfully sued keeps their money.

Narváez, who won a $3,000 judgment against Michael, said he sent six information subpoenas to New York City banks hoping one might have an account for Michael. But he was never able to locate one.

“I’m not a f—ing lawyer,” Narváez said. “I spent almost $100 just in sending information subpoenas.”

Natkin said she had a bank account number for Michael from when he issued her refund check, then canceled it before she could cash it. She also had his former Sunnyside address.

She said none of it was enough.

“ I get the call, I think like three months later saying, ‘There's no money, you're not going to get your money back. There's nothing we can do and you shouldn't try to do this anymore, it won't work,’” she recalled the marshal telling her.

‘Reasonable doubt’

Narváez said he was in the market for a commercial space when he met with Michael in January of last year. After two decades in the nail salon business, Narváez said his parents had just closed two salons they owned and ran in Queens. At 27, he said he planned to use his savings to open his own business using their equipment.

Michael showed him a sizable space on the second floor of a converted residential building in Elmhurst, Narváez said. Right there on the spot, Michael asked for $6,000 via Zelle to take the space off the market, Narváez said. He balked at the amount. They settled on $3,000.

But he said Michael didn’t want the money sent to his own account. Instead, he instructed him to send it to Monika Balaban, according to a screenshot of the Zelle transaction, a woman Michael said was his wife. Balaban declined to comment for this story.

Then Michael asked him for $16,000 in rent up front because it was his first business, Narváez said, which was when he decided to walk away.

“My mom was like, ‘There's no way that you're going to give him $16,000,’” Narváez said. Michael said it was the landlord who backed out of the deal.

Narváez said he went to Michael’s office to get his deposit back, but it had already shut down. He said he went into the shop next door, asking about Michael and The Pyramid Group.

“It was a cookie store,” Narváez said. “The manager told me, ‘Listen, I don’t want you to freak out, but you are like the fifth person asking for the same guy for the same company.’”

In addition to his small claims lawsuit, Narváez filed a complaint with the Queens District Attorney in December last year, hoping prosecutors could help.

In 2020, Katz, the Queens DA, established a bureau for focusing, in part, on white-collar housing fraud amid rising concerns about deed theft and bogus rental schemes.

“Scams, fraudulent transactions, and predatory practices in the housing market frequently rise to the level of criminal conduct. These schemes can devastate families and erode trust in the criminal justice system,” Katz said in a statement.

Her office declined to make someone available for an interview about how the bureau builds cases against people accused of rental fraud, and instead referred me to Diane Peress, a former  deputy bureau chief of financial crimes in Queens and former bureau chief of economic crimes in Nassau County, who has prosecuted similar cases.

Peress said prosecutors rely on multiple reports of fraud against the same person in order to establish a pattern of abusive practices.

“It's not just the person's individual complaint, but these complaint units then put [them] together,” she said.

Narváez felt he could show that type of pattern. He collected screenshots of his messages with Michael and negative reviews he found online recounting similar stories. The New York Department of State said it has also alerted the Queens DA of the 15 complaints that led to the revocation of Michael’s real estate license more than a decade ago.

But just one week after Narváez filed his complaint, he received a letter in the mail from William Jorgenson, the Queens DA’s Housing and Worker Protection Bureau Chief, informing him that the office would not be pursuing criminal charges in the matter.

“Given the much higher burden of proof in criminal cases, it is unlikely we will be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Jorgenson’s letter said. “Because of the nature of this case, it is more likely that you will receive the outcome you desire by moving forward with a civil suit than with criminal charges.”

Narváez was angry. He’d already pursued a small claims lawsuit against Michael and had hit nothing but dead ends.

“They say they don’t have enough evidence now. When is it going to be enough?” he said. “That’s what pisses me off because he’s still working.”  

The Queens DA’s office did not respond to a request to interview Jorgenson.

‘It’s still a struggle’

A new business has replaced The Pyramid Group at its brick and mortar office in Sunnyside. The Sunnyside Mailbox offers printing and shipping services. When I visited the shop on two separate occasions, Michael was working behind the counter.

When I asked if the store was his, Michael responded, “I have a lot of businesses” and “ I'm not sure what having a package shipping store has to do with anything.”

He then escorted me out the door and later threatened legal action if I attempted to engage with him in person again.

Those who still want their deposits returned said the financial loss continued to reverberate through their lives for months if not years later.

“It totally just messed everything up,” Natkin said. “Even now, it’s still a struggle and I’m just one person living on my own in New York City as a freelance makeup artist.”

Hayman said he had to leave the city and live with family while he continued to work a job in Brooklyn until he could save up enough for another apartment. But he abandoned his attempt to sue Michael in small claims court.

“ It just got overwhelming,” Hayman said. “I had to move on with my life, like in a real way.”

Ghany had bigger problems that she said were only compounded by the loss of money.

“ I had given birth. My son was three months old. I was going through a divorce. I had a 3-year-old daughter,” she said. “Of course, I needed every, every dollar.”

Ramirez graduated from law school last year. She said the experience has taught her to be more cautious.

“I think he just took advantage of a desperate person, and there were red flags and I took a risk, but I think I was just in a situation where I felt like I had to,” Ramirez said. “I needed a place to live.”

Meanwhile, apartment ads by a Mr. D Michael continue to be posted on Craigslist with the same phone number that was listed for The Pyramid Group. One recent advertisement reads: “NO CREDIT? NO PROBLEM!”