NEW YORK (AP) — A man accused of fraud for pretending to own a historic Manhattan hotel where he lived rent-free for years has been found incompetent to stand trial, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Doctors examining Mickey Barreto ruled that he was not mentally competent to face criminal charges, and prosecutors confirmed the findings at a court hearing Wednesday, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Alvin Bragg.
Judge Cori Weston gave Barreto until Nov. 13 to find appropriate psychiatric care for the hospitalized patients, Bragg’s office said.
Barreto had been receiving outpatient treatment for drug addiction and mental health issues, but doctors concluded after a recent evaluation that he did not fully understand the criminal process, The New York Times first reported.
Barreto dismissed allegations of a drug problem as some sort of “party” and said prosecutors were trying to have him hospitalized because they didn’t have strong evidence against him. He sees advantages.
“It went from unfriendly, ‘He’s a criminal,’ to oh, they’re not talking about crime anymore. Now the main thing is: “Oh, poor thing. Finally, we convinced him to go get treatment,’” Barreto told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Brian Hutchinson, Barreto’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment. But at Wednesday’s hearing, he said he planned to ask his client’s current treatment provider to accept him, the Times reported.
In February, prosecutors charged Barreto with 24 counts, including criminal fraud and criminal contempt.
They say he forged a deed with the New Yorker Hotel purporting to transfer ownership of the entire building to him.
He then attempted to charge rent to one of the hotel’s tenants and demanded, among other things, that the hotel transfer its accounts to him.
Barreto began living at the hotel in 2018 after arguing in court that he paid about $200 for a one-night stay and therefore had tenant rights, based on a quirk of the city’s housing laws and the hotel’s failure to send a lawyer. to a key audience.
Barreto said he was living at the hotel without paying rent because the building’s owners, the Unification Church, never wanted to negotiate a lease with him, but they also legally could not. ‘expel.
Today, his criminal case may be leading him toward some sort of rift.
“So if you ask me if it’s a better thing, in a way it is. Because I am not treated like a criminal but like a crazy person,” Barreto told the AP.
Built in 1930, this imposing Art Deco structure and its huge red “New Yorker” sign are an oft-photographed landmark in midtown Manhattan.
Muhammad Ali and other famous boxers stayed there during their fights at Madison Square Garden, about a block away. Inventor Nikola Tesla even lived in one of its more than 1,000 rooms for a decade. And NBC was broadcasting from its Terrace Room.
But the New Yorker closed as a hotel in 1972 and was used for years for religious purposes before part of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994.
