Millie Salisbury, aka Mildred Hecht, Mildred Curvin is a con-artist, liar and a thief.in May I met Millie (via phone) through a referral from another real estate agent in Rochester, New York. Millie misrepresented herself to me as a real estate broker doing business as Salisbury Enterprises. I later learned that she did not have a valid sales person's license and was not a real estate broker.
Millie was basically operating a real estate scam. She would collect earnest money deposits from investors and use them for her own personal and business matters. Apparently Millie owed many contractors and handymen for work they had done on properties for other real estate investor's she was scamming. There is a long, long history to her scams and frauds and many judgements against her can be found in public records online at the Monroe County, New York, County Clerks Recorders office.
I discovered Millie's fraud when I learned she had forged my name on a counter offer. That counter offer said that the seller would do no work for the mortgage requirements or for a C of O (certificate of occupancy). I would have never agreed to that. I started to investigate where my earnest money deposits were and found most were not on file nor at the attorney's office as claimed in the purchase contracts. I cancelled the purchase contracts and asked for my money back.
In fact Theron James the realtor for the seller of the property with the forged counter has not returned $1,500 of deposits. See Theron James complaint here
http://usacomplaints.com/reports/0/467/
RipOff0467677.htm
I gave Millie a total of $10,000 for earnest money deposits. A $4,000 check was given to her sister Sue, whom Millie told me handled the bookkeeping. That money has not been returned. See complaint on Sue here http://usacomplaints.com/reports/0/469/
RipOff0469221.htm
Another $6,000 was wired to Millie's attorney Richard H. Holtzberg. I called the law office and spoke to paralegal Brenda Sterns to get the routing and banking information and informed her I was wiring funds for earnest money deposits.
When I discovered the fraud and that I was being scammed by Millie I called the office of attorney Holtzberg and got nothing but a big runaround. I asked for a copy of the ledger account for my funds. It took two months to get that.in the meantime I received a fax from Holtzberg's office threatening to sue me for slander and libel against his client and asking for a release of liability for himself (Holtzberg) and an appraiser Michael Farash.
When I made phone calls regarding this scam I informed everyone that I learned Millie was not licensed to sell real estate and that she had claimed she had advance earnest money deposits on my behalf but yet there was no record of the funds. My funds, I later learned when I received the ledger account, had been disbursed to Millie's personal assistant, ex-husband, various handymen, website designer, and even to attorney Holtzberg for legal fees she owed him! Apparently Millie had run up many bills that she had not paid including legal fees to her attorney. Those fees came out of my funds for earnest money deposits which was clearly stated to paralegal Sterns when I called Holtzberg's office to get the banking and routing information. And I have the ledger account to prove it. What's truly ironic is that I basically paid for that fax sent to me by Holtzberg threatening to sue me for libel and slander because I was asking questions.
Eventually in an email to her attorney Holtzberg Millie said she would return my money. Copy of email here I have redacted email and property addresses.
From:
"Richard H. Holtzberg" (email address redacted by sherig)
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Sheri G (redacted)
Below is Millies recapitulation.
Sheri's Assigned Contracts
(Addresses of properties redacted by sherig)
I have collected to date 4,000.00 check
6,000.00 Deposit into Holtzberg law firm.
10,000.00 Total in payments from Sheri G
I paid deposits because she never mailed in timely fashion. These are the only payments I ever received.
I owe Sheri 6,000.00 Deposits
3,100.00 Appraisals
TOTAL amount owed is 9,100.00 Deposits and appraisals
Millie lied. She did not advance those deposits as claimed.
Another email from attorney Holtzberg claimed he had met with his client and she agreed to return my money. Copy of email here
Thursday, September 7 8:18 AM
From:
"Richard H. Holtzberg" (redacted)
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Sheri G" (redacted)
Sheri, I have met with Millie and she agrees to pay to you the sum of $11,200 as set forth in your email of Aug 29. I am preparing a release releasing Millie, her company, Mike Farash and Aaron appraisals from liability upon payment of the aforesaid sum. I wil send the release to Steve (attorney name redacted by sherig) for your signature. He will hold it in escrow until the $11,200 is paid to him. The funds will be available on Fri Sept 8. Please act as soon as possible.
Richard H. Holtzberg
The release being referred to is mentioned in the fax that I received threatening to sue me for slander and libel. I emailed back to attorney Holtzberg asking for clarifaction of what to act as soon as possbile on and again nothing happened. I continued to email for updates and no response. Nothing happened. No funds were returned.
All the while this was going on I learned yet another investor had been scammed by Millie. This investor also wired funds to attorney Holtzberg and funds were going out of his account through Holtzberg's office as directed by Millie. I learned from that investor that most of the funds were gone from his account even before he had closed a real estate transaction.
To this date, three years later, no money has been returned to anyone.
I reported this to many government agencies. I was told numerous times that there are no resources to investigate this. I was however able to make a report to the Rochester police as an economic crime and I provided all the contact information of various investors who had been scammed and even copies of the emails where Millie said she would return my money. Two people were interviewed by the police but no one else was contacted.
So how did this scam happen? First off, I'll admit I was stupid. I fell for the con-job. I trusted that she was a real estate broker. I had no reason to check on the license. The scam happened because many people, including other investors who were scammed, didn't do anything about it. I know because I personally talked to several of them. When I finally was able to get a report taken by Rochester police we (myself and the other investor's) had some hope that justice might come but nothing happened. Millie was evicted from her apartment (scamming another landlord yet again) and I was told the police, through a search warrant, picked up her computer and boxes of records. Nothing happened. It's my understanding that the investigation was dropped. Why? I'll let the readers of this report speculate on that.
Another reason this scam happened is, in my opinion, because of Millie's family. I've heard that the family, sisters Sue and Paula, who share the same last name as Millie, and mother Carol McLaughlin of Grapevine, Texas have a pattern of rescuing and covering up for Millie. I know this for a fact because while trying to recover my money from sister Sue I sent certified mail and emails to the family because I had heard that Millie was sending money to her sisters.
Mother McLaughlin responded to me persoanlly via email in a very, very strange and outraged way claiming that Millie left her home when she was 14 and implying that she had not seen her daughter since then. I knew this was a lie because another investor in Rochester, NY had dinner with Millie and her mother within the last year. She also threatened to sue me, like Millie did and her attorney. Family trait I guess.
Millie and sister Sue made many claims that the money would be returned but no charges or lawsuit has been filed as of yet so Millie can tell her family that she did nothing wrong because the police never came. No threat of jail time therefore why pay back the money? And that's how we go from Millie to Madoff and all scams and cons in between. Madoff even said in a prison interview that he kept his scam going because no one stopped him. Millie has no assets, has page after page of judgements and liens on public records, does not have a job and moves back and forth from Rochester NY to Grapevine, Texas to live with her sisters.
Another reason Millie was able to defraud people was because of the several real estate agencies she worked for, whom in my opinion, just passed her off to the next agency who employed her. If the Association of Realtors and the individual brokers who employed her were truly interested in the ethics of their members/agents and the integrity of the industry itself they should have stopped her a long time ago.
To this date, three years later, no money has been returned. I was told by an attorney in Rochester in the beginning of all this that I was wasting my time with the authorities and this would have to be taken up as a civil action. There are still three years left on the statue of limitations.
I have filed this complaint complaint to warn the public and hopefully help someone else avoid being scammed and ripped off.
In fact it could be argued that through the services of complaint, googling a persons name and searching public records the public is therefore more protected from con-artists, scammers and thieves than through law enforcement, regulatory agencies and the justice system.
Caveat Emptor
In God We Trust
Everyone Else Must Show Proof
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