A Garden City real estate lawyer admitted Thursday to stealing more than $5 million from dozens of clients on dodgy property sales over the last four years, Nassau prosecutors said.
Daniel Boldi, 49, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of second-degree grand larceny and a charge of a scheme to defraud and agreed to forfeit his law license, the Nassau County District Attorney’s office said in a press release.
Prosecutors said that Boldi, a Hofstra Law School graduate admitted to the bar in 2003, embezzled $5,780,424 between September 2020 and January 2024 from homeowners, real estate agents and other property sales professionals.
Under his plea agreement, Boldi will be forced to pay back $1 million if he wants to get the 3-to-9-year negotiated sentence, according to the district attorney’s office. He could spend as long as 12 years behind bars if he fails to come up with the cash by his sentencing date on April 17, prosecutors said.
Four dozen clients using his Boldi Law Group firm to buy or sell property lost $4,630,424 from his admitted schemes, according to the district attorney.
“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,” District Attorney Anne Donnelly said. “Daniel Boldi’s guilty plea is a step toward financially restoring the lives of the victims he devastated through his schemes.”
In one instance, prosecutors said he lied about paying off the balance of the mortgage of an East Meadow couple selling their home, forcing them to continue to make payments on a propertythey no longer owned.
In another scheme, he stole $1.15 million from a private investor using fake mortgage and closing records, prosecutors charge.
In another, the defendant also provided a private lender with fraudulent mortgage and title closing records, embezzling $1.15 million through two separate loan thefts between Sept. 8, 2020, and Nov. 7, 2023.
Boldi’s defense lawyer, Michael Franzese, said his client hopes to pay off the money he owes.
“This, unfortunately, evolved from a series of bad judgments and real estate investments that were less stable than he thought they were,” Franzese said. “He’s going to try to make restitution. He’s going to try to sell some property to see if can pay back the money he owes.”