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A former commercial real estate executive who stole millions from his employer and used part of the money to buy an Upper East Side co-op has found out how much time he’ll spend in prison.
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Jared Solomon, 49, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Friday. He’ll also serve three years of supervised release after he gets out. He has to forfeit more than $9 million in fraud proceeds, along with his stake in the two luxury homes he bought with the money, and pay restitution. The release didn’t give a restitution amount.One of those homes is the $3.6 million co-op at 23 East 74th Street that we reported on when Solomon was convicted in April. The other is a $4.55 million house in Purchase, NY. Prosecutors say the stolen money also covered a country club membership and a Porsche, among other luxuries. Solomon also got an $850,000 mortgage by giving a lender false information and a doctored bank statement.
Solomon was a vice president of leasing at Vornado Realty Trust. A jury found him guilty of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and bank fraud after a one-week trial, and he’s been in custody since the verdict.
Prosecutors say the scheme started in 2009, when Solomon set up fake commercial real estate brokerage companies. For about 14 years, he told Vornado that brokers were owed fees or construction reimbursements on deals he’d worked on. None of that work was ever done. Instead, 17 payments totaling more than $9.5 million went into bank accounts Solomon controlled under the fake companies’ names.
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To hide what he was doing, Solomon made up fake personas and email accounts and used a temporary phone number and a newly bought cellphone to pose as company representatives, prosecutors said. He also forged real people’s signatures on phony agreements and gave a bank a fake business certificate to open an account.U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley said Solomon “took advantage of his position and used victims’ personally identifiable information,” adding, “This will not be tolerated on any level.”
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