A forged deed, a fake notary stamp, and an elderly owner's home in LeDroit Park
Jeffrey M. Young-Bey, 67, of Washington, D.C., was found guilty by a federal jury on 12 February 2024 on 12 charges after prosecutors showed he forged the signatures of an elderly homeowner who owned a LeDroit Park townhome free and clear, used a fake notary stamp to make the deed look legitimate, and filed it with the D.C. Recorder of Deeds. He used the stolen title to obtain more than $850,000 in fraudulent mortgage and construction loans across two properties, and spent part of the proceeds on two BMWs.
- Year
- 2024
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Convicted
- Reported loss
- $850,000
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Home title fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-11
The facts, as recorded
- Jeffrey M. Young-Bey, 67, of the District of Columbia, was found guilty by a federal jury on 12 February 2024.
- The jury convicted him on 12 counts: one count of conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud, two counts of bank fraud, two counts of mail fraud, two counts of money laundering, and five counts of aggravated identity theft, before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly).
- Starting around November 2019, Young-Bey targeted a residential townhome in LeDroit Park owned free and clear by an elderly homeowner.
- He prepared a fraudulent property deed with the true owners' forged signatures and a fake notary stamp to make it appear legitimate, then filed it with the D.C. Recorder of Deeds.
- A second property, in the Shepherd Park neighbourhood, was targeted using the same method.
- The stolen titles were used to obtain more than $850,000 in fraudulent loans: roughly a $360,000 mortgage on one property and a construction loan of more than $500,000 on the other.
- Proceeds were used, among other things, to purchase a BMW 3-Series for roughly $23,000 and a BMW 7-Series for roughly $120,000.
Why this case matters
This is the clearest illustration of the mechanism on this page: a deed forged for a property the victim already owned free and clear, with no contact between the fraudster and the true owner at any point. The elderly homeowner did not sign anything, was not called, and was not persuaded of anything — the theft happened entirely on paper, at a government office, without them.
Two properties, one method
Young-Bey did not stop after one theft. The same technique — a forged deed and a fake notary stamp filed with the D.C. Recorder of Deeds — was used against a second property in Shepherd Park, turning a one-off forgery into a repeatable method for generating fraudulent loans against homes he had no claim to.
The caveat
Young-Bey was found guilty by a federal jury on all 12 counts on 12 February 2024. This page describes the jury’s verdict; it does not state a specific sentence, because this site could not independently verify sentencing details beyond the conviction itself from a source it could directly access.
Sources
- Jeffrey M. Young-Bey, 67, Found Guilty by Jury in Scheme to Steal Residential Real Estate Using Fraudulent Deeds. Congress Heights on the Rise (reproducing the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia press release). Accessed 2026-09-11. Supports: Young-Bey's name, age, the 12 February 2024 guilty verdict, the 12 counts, the judge, the LeDroit Park and Shepherd Park properties, the forged signatures and fake notary stamp, the more than $850,000 in fraudulent loans, and the BMW purchases.