Desmond Eaddy. (
)
What seemed like a dream deal of spending the summer living in one of New York’s hottest neighborhoods has become a nightmare for more than a dozen out-of-towners.
Many of the victims – college students and young professionals – told the Post they were each duped out of thousands of dollars by two Brooklyn men posing as lease holders of a massive loft within a new luxury apartment complex at 175 Powers St. in Williamsburg.
The alleged scammers, Desmond Eaddy and Ronnie Barron, used Craigslist and other ads to reel in the unsuspecting victims, including eight from Ireland, and collected at least $14,000.
Left with empty pockets, many say they’ve spent the past month working odd jobs and scrambling just to raise enough cash for food and shelter.
“This has been pretty traumatizing,” said Neil Sturdy, 19, who traveled to the city with two other friends from Ireland. “We came to New York and were taken advantage of. Now we sometimes don’t even have enough money to feed ourselves.”
The trio says they were taken for a total of $3,375 and that their pre-paid, nonrefundable return flight home isn’t until September.
The ads claimed rooms were available for $1,100 monthly “in a brand new, huge, two-floor loft in the absolute best part of Brooklyn” and existing roommates included a “carefully selected great group of students, artists, actors/models, interns and those interested in film and TV production.”
However, there was never any “great group” of roommates — nor an apartment to live in.
Eaddy, 29, and Barron, 29, never had legal authority to sublet the space for residential use – only a handshake agreement with building’s owners to use it for film and TV production. Eaddy previously did casting work for the TV flop “Gastineau Girls.”
“They never had a lease, so they had no right to collect deposits,” said the building’s co-owner, Abe Jacob.
The duo hired contractors to carve up the commercial space and convert it to an 8-bedroom “illegal hostel,” according the building’s existing tenants.
But construction was halted long before the apartment was complete, even though the out-of-towners had paid to move in by mid-June.
Eaddy and Barron have spent the past month repeatedly claiming it would be ready “within days” but never delivering, their alleged victims said.
Grania Frueh and Vineet Sathe, both 21-year-olds from Cincinnati, were taken for $3,850 and produced cancelled checks to prove it. Both have asked the NYPD to look into their claims, and Frueh last week sued Eaddy and Barron in Brooklyn Supreme Court to get her money back.
After arriving in New York, Frueh and many of the other Powers Street renters were moved into another Williamsburg apartment that Eaddy and Barron had shares in on North 5th Street. What the two Brooklynites failed to mention was the apartment was fully occupied.
Frueh, a University of Cincinnati graphic design student, said she spent four days sharing the small apartment with 14 people, “basically squatting in a divided storage space” and “battling cockroaches, spiders and ants.” She and Sathe have since moved to a relative’s home in Cobble Hill and plan to return to Cincinnati in the fall.
Many of their fellow victims were not so fortunate. Some say Eaddy and Barron shuttled them to a hostel, which they said was temporary until the loft was ready. But after picking up the hostel bill the first few nights, Eaddy and Barron stopped paying and started ignoring phone calls, Sturdy said.
Both Eaddy and Barron did not respond to many phone, text and e-mail messages over the weekend.