With an array of real estate crimes, ranging from deed forgery to mortgage fraud schemes, adding to foreclosure rates in Brooklyn neighborhoods, the borough’s district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, says the time has come for a specialized unit to investigate and prosecute them.

The need for such an office has been building, Mr. Hynes said, announcing the new unit on Friday. As foreclosure rates have sharply risen in central Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mr. Hynes’s office, with limited resources, has been forced to turn down real estate investigations, and instead has referred victims to civil court or relied on federal prosecutors, who generally concentrate on larger schemes.

Mr. Hynes said the new 12-member unit would be financed for two years with $875,000 in federal money and would help people like Levi Latham, 75, a Brooklyn retiree whose house was, in effect, stolen by a woman who took Mr. Latham’s personal information, a prosecutor said. After executing and recording a false deed, the woman is now listed as the owner of the house.

“There was mail coming in her name to my address, and I found it very strange,” said Mr. Latham, who joined Mr. Hynes and Senator Charles E. Schumer at a news conference announcing the new unit. “Regardless how vigilant you are, these scam artists are always one step above.” The woman’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Schumer said he secured the funds for the unit in the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill. It is to be staffed by new hires and workers reassigned from other parts of the office, and will have five financial investigators, four lawyers, a unit chief, a paralegal and a detective investigator.

“I am hopeful it will be a model so that this will happen in the other boroughs, in the suburbs that have the same types of problems, and around the country,” Mr. Schumer said.

Similar units have been created by prosecutors in other regions with high foreclosure rates, providing a sketch of how the housing crisis has unfolded around the country.

Richard K. Farrell, an investigator who will head the Brooklyn unit, said the houses in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant had become easy targets, like banks. “Everyone knows where the money is,” he said.

(Source: NY Times)