Smooth-as-silk swindler practices art of the con

He persuades Selma and Jack Winston to invest $3.5 million over five years in a series of real estate deals run out of his Paramus office. Within months of Jack's death in 2002, "interest" checks to the grieving widow start to bounce. With more than $800,000 in worthless checks, Selma finally blows the whistle, leading to Greenblatt's arrest. But it's too late. The big loss will force her to sell her beloved lakeside home in Bloomfield, Mich. A year later, Greenblatt is facing serious jail time. He calls Selma, now 88. Could she "advance" him $138,500? She wires him the cash.

"He said it was a way to get my money back," Selma explains. Like many investors, she is closely following a series of criminal cases against Greenblatt. Her case in Hackensack has been put on hold pending his sentencing on federal fraud charges, which was postponed from this month to Oct. 5. Also waiting is Malcolm Barksdale, who was a 40-year-old businessman trying to cash in on the booming Harlem real estate market when he first met Greenblatt in 1994. Greenblatt was known in the African-American community as the "go-to guy when you needed money." But when Greenblatt wanted $60,000 back on a $25,000 loan, Barksdale walked away.

He later sold the properties to Greenblatt, whose check bounced. Barksdale got the money two weeks later, and had no contact with Greenblatt until October 2004, when he heard that Joe was "cash poor" and willing to sell property at a big discount. Barksdale bit. He paid $200,000 for a building, but couldn't close the deal. Greenblatt insisted someone had made a mistake recording the deed. "I'll correct it," he promised.Two years later, Barksdale is still waiting.

"The man exudes credibility," Barksdale says today. "In the truest sense, he is a confidence man. He has an air of legitimacy about him, a sense of being on the level that's unbelievable."

Who is Joe Greenblatt? An Orthodox Jew whose victims were mostly Jewish, including a Brooklyn synagogue.

A disbarred lawyer who bilked investors out of as much as $50 million over 12 years, continuing to work his scams even as courts in three jurisdictions closed in on him. A wheeler-dealer who wrote dozens of worthless checks to stave off investors, creditors and at least three of his attorneys. A smooth-talking Ponzi scheme master who used money from new scams to pay off old victims, keeping one step ahead of the law until January, when he was finally thrown in jail. "The man is an amazing fraud, an amazing fraud," said Ben Janowski, a New Yorker who lost nearly a third of the $90,000 he invested with Maywood Capital Corp., the Paramus-based real estate investment company that is at the center of Greenblatt's legal problems.

"You can look him in the face, talk to him," Janowski said. "He has a boyish face, seems to have a simple answer to everything. He's just incredible." And elusive. Despite being nailed on 94 felony counts in a Brooklyn court nine years ago, Greenblatt was allowed to remain on the street so he could make restitution. He fell $1.5 million short, but used the time to build a rap sheet that included two more arrests, at least five fraud lawsuits and hundreds of bounced checks.

While the legal system moved at a glacial pace, Greenblatt used what one victim's attorney called "Svengali magic" to rob additional investors of their life savings and crush their retirement dreams. He promised high returns on mortgage loans that were supposedly backed by real estate. Investors typically received "interest" checks right away. What investors didn't know was that the same urban properties were sometimes sold to multiple investors or that the mortgages were never recorded, and that interest payments they received early on came from new investors' money. How much of their money was actually invested, only Greenblatt knows. When checks bounced, as they eventually would, Greenblatt "never lacked for something to say," and never lost his cool, calm demeanor, Janowski said.

"We had a problem with our bank, so I'm opening a new account," Greenblatt told him. "I'll wire the interest to you tomorrow." And if you complained enough he would, Janowski said. And he always, always returned phone calls. He wasn't stopped until Jan. 5, when a federal judge – saying she had been more than patient with numerous delays – sent him to jail until he is sentenced on federal fraud charges. Two weeks later he was sentenced to three to nine years in prison in the Brooklyn case, and he still faces charges in New Jersey. Greenblatt's New Jersey attorney acknowledged the bounced checks when his client was indicted, but he called them a civil matter, not criminal. Through his attorney in the federal case, Greenblatt declined to be interviewed for this article.

Some of the investors were wealthy, but most were not, said Clinton Calhoun, a lawyer representing several victims from Greenblatt's days at Executive Funding Corp., the Brooklyn-based real estate investment company that swindled investors out of $15 million in the early 1990s. "They were hard-working, nearing retirement," said Calhoun. "They entrusted Greenblatt with retirement funds. It was life-altering to some of the investors."

Stephen Coffey was one of them. Coffey, 65, dreamed of a retirement home in the hills of North Carolina and being able to help support his daughter. Instead he's living in a $600-a-month apartment in Venice, Fla., after losing more than $325,000 invested with Greenblatt, starting in May 2002. Early on, the interest payments came on schedule, but when Coffey attempted to get part of his investment returned by the end of 2002, the checks bounced. So he called Greenblatt and reached him on the ski slopes in Utah or Aspen, Coffey said. Greenblatt blamed it on a "screw up" and said he would replace the checks, which he did. They bounced too, as did dozens of others Coffey received in subsequent months. His response, Coffey said: "Don't worry, don't worry. I'll have the money later." When Coffey complained loudly enough, Greenblatt wired him his interest payments, but he never saw his principal. "We're stuck here in the swamps," Coffey said. "He's so glib, you think he is the nicest guy in the world." Like Selma Winston, who spoke with Greenblatt by phone almost daily, Coffey said he thought he had a relationship with the man entrusted with his retirement funds. "I'd call him, he'd call me. He was always massaging my ego. It was all a hoax, all a huge lie."

Greenblatt presenting himself as a religious man at first gave many investors comfort, but later became a source of outrage. "He's a religious Jew; how could he do it?" Esther Kitain asked.

To Calhoun, however, "it was a joke to pass himself off as a pious man when he was a common thief. Investors believed him and believed in him. He adopted a lot of this religious veneer to lure them in." Even as his problems mounted in Brooklyn, Greenblatt maintained his air of confidence, said Manny Oscar of San Diego, Kitain's son-in-law, who lost more than $70,000 he invested with Executive Funding. "He was low-key, humorous, giving, accommodating," Oscar said. "He was never stern, never difficult. Obviously, he was a wonderful con man."

Greenblatt's mother-in-law – who is trying to help her daughter and two grandsons manage while Greenblatt remains locked up, facing a decade or more in jail – sings his praises. "He's a good father, a good husband," Yolanda Horvath said. "He kept my daughter like a queen. That's the bottom line." Maybe so, but that lifestyle – including a $1.6 million condo on the Upper East Side, private schools for the couple's two sons, a million-dollar home in the Hamptons – came with money stolen from Maywood Capital investors, says Susan Marcus, the company's former accountant.

"He had everyone believing he was going to take their money and invest it in real estate, and return them a huge profit," Marcus said. "In fact, much of the money was diverted, and only a small portion went into real estate." Greenblatt was scheduled to be sentenced July 21 on his federal fraud guilty plea, but the date was pushed back to Oct. 5 at the request of his newest attorney. As a result, he remains under federal control in a private correctional facility in Jamaica, N.Y. Greenblatt's condo and house in the Hamptons, both purchased in the past five years, are expected to go on the selling block, along with a $500,000 condominium owned by his father on the ocean in Bal Harbour, Fla., to get money for restitution. Each is heavily mortgaged, U.S. Bankruptcy Court records show. That means more waiting for investors like Barksdale, who has attended many of Greenblatt's hearings, sitting quietly in the back of courtrooms in Central Islip and Brooklyn, still hoping to recoup some of his money. Many, like Selma Winston, remain angry, and frustrated over how they were taken in by Greenblatt. "I can't believe I was so stupid," she said.

"Who is Joe Greenblatt? An Orthodox Jew..."

Hmmm. I suppose we're to amke the connection on our own...Orthodox Jews are greedy sharlitans. Whatever.

"He persuades Selma and Jack Winston to invest $3.5 million over five years in a series of real estate deals run out of his Paramus office. Within months of Jack's death in 2002, "interest" checks to the grieving widow start to bounce. With more than $800,000 in worthless checks, Selma finally blows the whistle, leading to Greenblatt's arrest. But it's too late. The big loss will force her to sell her beloved lakeside home in Bloomfield, Mich. A year later, Greenblatt is facing serious jail time. He calls Selma, now 88. Could she "advance" him $138,500? She wires him the cash."

The words "Stop the Insanity!!" come to mind

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