West Philly man charged with housing scam

A West Philadelphia man was charged Thursday with a variety of real estate scams, from stealing houses to renting properties that weren't his.

The Philadelphia Police and District Attorney accused Dwayne E. Stewart of 52 felony counts going back to 2009 that include: forging deeds to illegally transfer three houses and two vacant lots to his own possession; "selling" properties that he didn't own to unsuspecting third parties; and pocketing rent and security deposits for houses and apartments that he didn't have authority to lease.

The District Attorney's Office had no trouble making the arrest; Stewart, a convicted sex offender, has been incarcerated in the city's House of Correction for the past month. He was picked up for failing to keep State Police informed of his address under Megan's Law because of a 1997 conviction in New Jersey for criminal sexual contact.

Stewart allegedly wrote $1,403 worth of checks to the city to have bogus real estate documents officially recorded - but the checks bounced, when TD Bank informed the city that the account had been closed.

It's the second investigation involving stolen houses in Philadelphia to lead to criminal charges this year.

In January, the District Attorney's economic and cybercrime unit accused four people, including the son of former Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, of forging documents to steal 22 vacant properties in South Philadelphia and other neighborhoods, often reselling them to innocent purchasers before the thefts were discovered.

The Stewart probe followed a different path, through the District Attorney's private criminal complaint unit, headed by assistant district attorney Matthew Perks.

Perks said he was spurred by a 2011 story in the Philadelphia City Paper, describing how Stewart had started to negotiate a rent-to-own deal for a house on Chestnut Street near 49th, then borrowed the keys and moved in, changing the locks and ringing the house with security cameras.

The owners of the property, Heidi and Dave Conner, spent more than a year and thousands of dollars, unsuccessfully trying to get Stewart out of the property.

A District Attorney's spokeswoman, quoted in the City Paper at the time, said the office declined to prosecute the Stewart/Conner case because it was "a real estate deal that didn't work out." As part of the new set of charges, Stewart is accused of defiant trespass, a felony, for taking over the property.

It's too late for the Conners, who lost the house in a sheriff's sale last year. Stewart continued living there until February, when the new owners finally forced him out and he moved into the Holiday Inn Express on Columbus Blvd.

Under Megan's Law, Stewart had three days to notify State Police about his new address. But he neglected to do so, and on March 5, a state trooper met him in the lobby and put him under arrest. He's been held at the House of Correction, needing at least $5,000 to make bail.

Perks said that after reading about Stewart's abuse of the Conners, he noticed a series of private criminal complaints from people who said Stewart had advertised properties for rent on Craigslist, accepted hundreds of dollars in advance security and rental payments, then failed to let them move in.

Perks fed Stewart's name into the Police Department's Integrated Information Network one day and 50 different references came up - some of them suggesting that Stewart had forged documents to steal properties.

"My response was, 'Holy Mackerel,'" Perks said. He asked Southwest Detectives to assign an investigator and detective Angela Torian spent close to a year documenting Stewart's alleged offenses.

"We wanted to make one strong case that made it clear he was engaged in a pattern of real estate fraud," Perks said.

Some victims question why it took so long to bring charges.

In a story last November, the Daily News interviewed a North Philadelphia man, Leon Pinkney, who accused Stewart of stealing three properties through deed forgeries.

Donald Calabrese, a construction worker from Roselle, N. J. said he gave Stewart $1,500 last November as a deposit to buy a house on Dauphin St. in North Philadelphia.

Stewart was "very smooth," Calabrese recalled. "He came off like a religious, God-fearing man. . . . It turned out the house was owned by a bank in Georgia."

Calabrese turned to the police for help getting his money back. "I went down and filed charges against him. I gave them reams of information. They told me, 'Don't go near him, we're building a case against him.'. . . If you listen to all the cop said, he should have been arrested a long time ago."

Perks said it was reasonable to spend a year establishing the scope of Stewart's activity.

"You can prosecute individual cases, but in a vacuum, they're not necessarily strong cases," he said. "We wanted to make one strong case that made it clear he was engaged in a pattern of real estate fraud."