Garden City attorney pleads guilty in $5M real estate fraud scheme

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A Garden City attorney has pleaded guilty in a $5 million fraud scheme, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s office.

Daniel Boldi pleaded guilty to 13 counts of second-degree grand larceny charges and one first-degree scheme to defraud in connection with defrauding 46 separate real estate transactions between September 2020 and January 2024, District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.

Now, he faces up to three to nine years in prison, and he is required to pay $1 million in partial upfront restitution, the DA’s office said. He will no longer be licensed to practice law. Boldi faces four to12 years in prison if he fails to pay the full upfront restitution amount by the time of his sentence.

“Daniel Boldi posed as a trusted professional in real estate transactions and orchestrated elaborate schemes that defrauded nearly four dozen prospective homeowners, real estate brokers, and even a volunteer ambulance corps out of more than five million dollars,” Donnelly said in a news release about the guilty plea.

The plea, she said, “is a step towards financially restoring the lives of the victims he devastated through his schemes.”

Victims in this case included individual homeowners, real estate agents, and other entities for whom he held money in escrow, officials said. Boldi committed escrow thefts that totaled more than $4.6 million from victims who worked with him on sales of their property or the purchasing of new property, according to the DA.

In one scheme, on Oct. 31, 2023, a couple worked with Boldi on the closing of the sale of their home in East Meadow. The defendant acted as the settlement agent for the mortgage lender used in connection with the transaction. Upon receipt of the loan funds from the home buyer’s mortgage company, the defendant was to distribute $309,367 to the couple’s mortgage lender to pay off the remainder of the mortgage on the East Meadow home.

The defendant falsely told the couple that the wire transfer from the buyer’s lender were not posted to his escrow account, and the funds were not available at the time of the closing, officials said. Based upon the defendant’s false representation that the funds were not posted yet, the parties agreed to a “dry closing,” and the deed to the home was held in escrow.

Days later, on Nov. 2, 2023, the defendant provided the couple with a fraudulent copy of what he purported to be a wire request for the mortgage payoff amount, as proof that the funds were sent to the couple’s mortgage company. As a result, the deed was released, and the sale was completed. However, the wire transfer was never sent to the couple’s mortgage company, officials said.

The mortgage payoff funds were never provided to the lender, and the couple has been forced to continue making mortgage payments on a home they no longer own, the DA’s office said.

In another scheme, the defendant also provided a private lender with a fraudulent mortgage and title closing records, embezzling $1.15 million through two separate loan thefts between Sept. 8, 2020, and Nov. 7, 2023, the DA’s office said.

According to bank records, Boldi used the funds he stole on various personal expenses unrelated to the victims’ transactions, including Venmo payments to other individuals and property investments, according to the DA.

He is due back in court for sentencing on April 17, 2025.