A disbarred attorney from Old Westbury was indicted by a grand jury Monday for allegedly stealing more than $4 million from multiple individuals – including his own wife – and banks he had represented in real estate deals dating back to 2008 using forged documents, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said.
James Kalpakis, 52, was charged with two counts of first-degree grand larceny, five counts of second-degree grand larceny, four counts of third-degree grand larceny, 10 counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and two counts of offering false instrument for filing in the first degree for stealing $4.315 million from five clients he represented prior to his suspension from law practice in 2005 and his disbarrment in 2009.
Kalpakis was originally arrested in January 2011 and charged with first-degree grand larceny and three counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, Rice said. Judge Philip Grella set his bail at $50,000 in bond or $25,000 cash, on which he remains free.
If convicted of the top count, Kalpakis faces up to 25 years in prison. He is due back in court June 4.
“The sheer amount of money this defendant stole is shocking, but the lengths to which he went to repeatedly victimize innocent people revel just what kind of person Mr. Kalpakis truly is,” Rice said. “Eventually, however, he became caught in his own web of deception.”
Kalpakis illegally obtained a 30-year, $1.1 million mortgage loan from a bank to refinance a mortgage on a home his wife owned by submitting a forged power of attorney in her name, which gave him the authority to sign the mortgage in her absence.
When the deal closed, Kalpakis allegedly received a check for $402,152 payable in his name.
The balance on the loan, Rice said, was used to pay off the existing mortgage, but Kalpakis stopped making payments on the loan in December 2009, without his wife’s knowledge of the loan’s existence.
Rice said Kalpakis stole approximately $1.3 million from one victim between October and December 2009 to whom he had sold two homes with forged deeds from banks which were not the actual owners of the properties. He allegedly stole an additional $290,000 from the victim between February and April of that year by not returning the client’s escrow deposit on the purchase of a home which fell through.
Kalpakis stole $500,000 from the same victim later that year by falsely representing that the money would be invested in oil, gas and mineral leases in Texas involving Kalpakis’s brother, Rice said.
In June 2010, Kalpakis stole $750,000 on a one-year mortgage loan from a private investment firm by representing himself as the attorney for the owners of a residential properties, one of whom he allegedly had already stolen from in 2009, and providing the lender with a forged power of attorney allowing him to collect on the loan.
Rice said Kalpakis stole $150,000 from a different victim between August and September 2010 by selling him a property owned by the same victim he stole from the previous year, providing him with forged documents giving Kalpakis the authority to sell it.
Kalpakis also stole $100,000 in escrow deposits toward the purchase of a home from a different victim in between October and April 2009, Rice said. The sale fell through but Kalpakis allegedly did not return the escrow funds.
In 2010, Kalpakis stole $45,000 in escrow deposits from a different client who sought to purchase a home, according to the indictment. Kalpakis did not return the funds despite the sale falling through.
Rice also said that Kalpakis had stolen $80,000 from a single victim on three separate occasions, the first between August 2010 and January 2011 when he stole $33,000 from the victim from the purchase of a home that fell through.
In October 2010, he allegedly stole $35,000 from the client by promising he would sign over a $42,000 settlement in a civil case that would be received later and net the client a $7,000 profit. In reality, Rice said, there no lawsuit, no client and no pending settlement.
Kalpakis allegedly pulled the scam on the victim again in November 2010, stealing $12,000 and promising a $3,000 profit.
Efforts to reach Kalpakis’s attorney, Randy Scott Zelin, were unavailing.
