A homeless blind man who craftily stole a Brooklyn apartment building from a younger man with the same name – and even used the building as collateral to bail himself out after he was arrested – was convicted on a raft of fraud and grand larceny charges Wednesday.
The dreadlocked Ralph Baker, 64, who used to work by photographing tourists in Times Square, wore a prison-made t-shirt that read “Not Guilty!” in Brooklyn Supreme Court and kept up his wily attempts at freedom even after the jury found him guilty.
“Can I appeal?” Baker said after the verdict.
“After your sentence,” his lawyer, Jay Cohen, told him.
“He’s a one-man pain the ass. I’m glad my name isn’t Ralph Baker,” Cohen said later outside court.
Baker – who once used his folding cane to jimmy the lock on a building and break into it – was convicted of illegally transferring the title to a Fort Greene apartment building owned by the clean-cut Ralph Baker, 47, into his name.
“I’m the good Ralph Baker, and he’s the evil Ralph Baker,” the younger Baker told The Post last year when his elder doppelganger was collared for his bail bluff.
The sightless scammer also stole title to a Williamsburg building where he lived for more than a decade, tricked the borough president’s office of topography into changing the address of the Fort Greene building, and even sicced the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office on the real Ralph Baker.
“He’s a very intelligent person who preyed on the system and his victims to try to gain control of a building and request rent from tenants of a building he didn’t own,” said the jury foreman, a 31-year-old advertising director.
Baker may truly believe the buildings are his.
Before his trial, he turned down a plea deal that would have let him out with time served – because he would have had to admit he wasn’t the owner.
“Every human needs a hope. He’s old and blind, and getting the houses is his hope,” said Baker’s pal and German painter Bernd Naber, 65.
“He didn’t want to take the deal because he really believed he owns the buildings.”
Brooklyn prosecutor Richard Farrell quoted the 17th Century poet John Milton – who dictated “Paradise Lost” because he was blind – in his opening argument, reminding jurors that blindness does not prevent a man from extraordinary acts.
Baker could face up to 15 years behind bars on the top count alone when he is sentenced.