New York
Man who lived rent-free in New Yorker Hotel, then claimed to own it, pleads guilty to fraud charge
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man who attempted to claim ownership of the New Yorker Hotel has pleaded guilty to fraud, ending a lengthy legal saga involving an obscure tenant law that allowed the man to live rent-free for years in the storied Manhattan hotel.
Mickey Barreto entered the plea on Wednesday, admitting that he had forged property records in an effort to take ownership over the hotel. That effort was, at least on paper, partially successful.
In Barreto’s telling, he and his boyfriend paid $200 in 2018 to rent one of the more than 1,000 rooms in the towering, oft-photographed Art Deco hotel. Barreto then requested a lease, claiming his one night stay entitled him to protections under a city housing law that applies to single-room occupants of buildings constructed before 1969.
When the hotel rebuffed him, he took his case to housing court. After the hotel failed to send a lawyer to a key hearing, Barreto was awarded “possession” of the room.
But Manhattan prosecutors said Barreto then went a step further, defrauding the state by uploading a fake deed to a city website that purported to transfer ownership of the entire building to himself.
The property is currently owned by the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which was founded in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The church did not respond to an e-mailed inquiry.
Barreto then attempted to collect rent from a hotel tenant and demanded the hotel’s bank transfer its accounts to him, according to prosecutors.
He was eventually evicted from the premises in 2024 and charged with multiple counts of felony fraud. He was later found unfit to stand trial and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.
As part of the plea, Barreto was sentenced to a six-month prison sentence that he has already served, along with five years of probation, according to a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney.
Brian Hutchinson, an attorney for Barreto, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Barreto previously told the AP that the judge who granted him “possession” of his room indirectly gave him the entire building because it had never been subdivided.
“I never intended to commit any fraud. I don’t believe I ever committed any fraud,” Barreto said at the time. “And I never made a penny out of this.”
Texas
Lawsuit alleges Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice physically assaulted former girlfriend
DALLAS (AP) — The former girlfriend of Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that he physically assaulted her multiple times over a year-and-a-half, causing injuries that included bleeding and bruising.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Dallas County by Dacoda Jones comes after she made domestic violence allegations in a series of social media posts last month. She is seeking more than $1 million in the lawsuit, which says the assaults happened at their homes in Dallas and suburban Kansas City.
In the lawsuit, Jones accuses Rice of strangling her in December 2023 after an “escalation in violent behavior” and that he continued to assault her over the course of their relationship, through July 2025. Jones’ attorney did not immediately respond to a question from The Associated Press on whether police had ever been called related to these incidents.
The lawsuit said Rice has “grabbed, choked, strangled, pushed, thrown, scratched, hit, and headbutted” Jones, in addition to hitting her with objects. The lawsuit said Rice has also thrown objects, punched walls and broken furniture, and that many of these incidents happened when Jones, who has two children with Rice, was pregnant.
Her injuries have included “bleeding, swelling, bruising and other pain and physical injury,” according to the lawsuit.
Agents listed for Rice did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on Wednesday. An attorney for Rice also did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Chiefs said they were aware of the lawsuit and remain in communication with the NFL. The NFL said the matter remains under review.
Rice missed the first six games of last season following an NFL suspension for his role in a high-speed crash on a Dallas highway that left multiple people injured during the 2024 offseason. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years’ probation after pleading guilty to third-degree felony charges of collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury.
Rice finished with 53 catches for 571 yards and five touchdowns as Kansas City went 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
Paris
Police arrest 11 in the beating death of a far-right student in France
PARIS (AP) — French police investigating the beating of a far-right militant who died of brain injuries have arrested 11 people, prosecutors said Wednesday, in a case adding fuel to long-standing divides in French politics ahead of presidential elections in 2027.
Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old student described as a fervent nationalist, died in a hospital on Saturday. He was beaten two days earlier by a group of people in the city of Lyon, in fighting that erupted between far-left and far-right supporters on the margins of a student meeting where a far-left lawmaker, Rima Hassan, was a keynote speaker.
An autopsy found that Deranque suffered a fractured skull and fatal brain injuries, according to Lyon’s prosecutor, Thierry Dran. He launched the police investigation for homicide and other potential criminal charges. Dran’s office said police detained a man and a woman on Wednesday morning, with nine other people taken into custody on Tuesday night.
Hassan, a French-Palestinian who was born in a Syrian refugee camp, is a European Parliament lawmaker for the far-left France Unbowed party. In a post on X after the attack on Deranque but before he died of his injuries, Hassan expressed “horror” over the violence and condemned it.
Deranque’s death triggered a storm of recriminations, mostly blaming France Unbowed. Its opponents accuse it of fomenting violence and tensions with its combative far-left politics, which include fierce criticism of Israel.
The party is led by veteran hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist who stood for the presidency in 2012, 2017 and 2022 and failed to advance to the decisive run-off round. He is preparing for another expected run next year, when President Emmanuel Macron ‘s second and last term ends.
Mélenchon insisted Tuesday that France Unbowed bore no blame for the tragedy in Lyon, saying: “We have absolutely nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with the death of this young Deranque.”
But the 11 people in police custody include the parliamentary aide of a France Unbowed lawmaker, French media reported. The lawmaker, Raphaël Arnault, confirmed the aide’s arrest in a post on X without giving the cause.
Arnault said he is ending the aide’s contract.
Violence has long been a persistent feature of French politics. Far-left and far-right factions harbor long-standing, intense and sometimes violent disregard for each other, although deaths in clashes between them have been rare in recent decades.
France is holding municipal elections next month. With campaigning in full swing, opponents of France Unbowed on the right and far-right laid blame for Deranque’s death on Mélenchon’s party, accusing it of fueling violence and appealing to voters not to support it.
Criticism also came from prominent figures on the left, including former French President François Hollande. He said the mainstream left, including his Socialist Party, must not team up again with Mélenchon’s party for the upcoming elections, as they did in the past.
“The relationship with France Unbowed is over,” he said.
New York
Jurors deliberate in trial over killings of 4 men as they slept on NYC streets
NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors deliberated Thursday in the trial of a man who beat four people to death as they slept on New York City’s streets. His lawyers acknowledge he did it but argue he was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible.
In an early signal from the jury’s closed-door discussions, the panel asked Thursday to re-hear parts of a defense psychologist’s testimony in which a prosecutor asked whether Randy Santos understood that his attacks were morally wrong.
Santos, 31, was arrested with a bloody metal bar in his hands shortly after the October 2019 rampage. It spurred scrutiny of the city’s struggles to aid and protect a homeless population that had reached record size.
Santos was homeless, as were some of the victims. The slain men — Chuen Kok, Anthony Manson, Florencio Moran and Nazario Vásquez Villegas — ranged in age from 39 to 83. Santos has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in their deaths and to attempted murder and assault charges involving other men in the hours and days before the killings in New York’s Chinatown.
Santos had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his lawyers argued that he sincerely believed he heard voices saying he had to kill 40 people or would die himself.
Defense attorney Arnold Levine contended in a closing argument Wednesday that Santos might have recognized he could land in legal trouble but couldn’t appreciate that what he was doing was morally wrong. The moral factor would be enough — if jurors accept it and agree that mental illness caused it — to support his insanity defense.
“The only explanation was Randy’s psychosis. ... It’s the only thing that explains what happened,” Levine told jurors, adding that “psychosis replaced Randy’s moral judgment.”
Prosecutors say Santos realized the attacks were both illegal and immoral. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson emphasized Wednesday that Santos sometimes looked out for potential witnesses and that he told a psychiatrist in 2024: “I know it’s not a good action.”
“Despite his illness, he was able to make a determination that what he was doing was wrong,” Peterson said in his summation.
The Dominican-born Santos, who’s following the trial via a Spanish-language interpreter, listened without showing much reaction to the summations. At one point, he briefly fluttered his hands near his face as Levine described a delusional Santos lashing out at his own grandfather long before the Chinatown killings.
If the jury rejects Santos’ insanity defense and convicts him, he could be sentenced to life in prison. If the jury instead finds him not responsible, he could be involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment for as long as officials and a court deem necessary.
Man who lived rent-free in New Yorker Hotel, then claimed to own it, pleads guilty to fraud charge
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man who attempted to claim ownership of the New Yorker Hotel has pleaded guilty to fraud, ending a lengthy legal saga involving an obscure tenant law that allowed the man to live rent-free for years in the storied Manhattan hotel.
Mickey Barreto entered the plea on Wednesday, admitting that he had forged property records in an effort to take ownership over the hotel. That effort was, at least on paper, partially successful.
In Barreto’s telling, he and his boyfriend paid $200 in 2018 to rent one of the more than 1,000 rooms in the towering, oft-photographed Art Deco hotel. Barreto then requested a lease, claiming his one night stay entitled him to protections under a city housing law that applies to single-room occupants of buildings constructed before 1969.
When the hotel rebuffed him, he took his case to housing court. After the hotel failed to send a lawyer to a key hearing, Barreto was awarded “possession” of the room.
But Manhattan prosecutors said Barreto then went a step further, defrauding the state by uploading a fake deed to a city website that purported to transfer ownership of the entire building to himself.
The property is currently owned by the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which was founded in South Korea by a self-proclaimed messiah, the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The church did not respond to an e-mailed inquiry.
Barreto then attempted to collect rent from a hotel tenant and demanded the hotel’s bank transfer its accounts to him, according to prosecutors.
He was eventually evicted from the premises in 2024 and charged with multiple counts of felony fraud. He was later found unfit to stand trial and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.
As part of the plea, Barreto was sentenced to a six-month prison sentence that he has already served, along with five years of probation, according to a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney.
Brian Hutchinson, an attorney for Barreto, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
Barreto previously told the AP that the judge who granted him “possession” of his room indirectly gave him the entire building because it had never been subdivided.
“I never intended to commit any fraud. I don’t believe I ever committed any fraud,” Barreto said at the time. “And I never made a penny out of this.”
Texas
Lawsuit alleges Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice physically assaulted former girlfriend
DALLAS (AP) — The former girlfriend of Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that he physically assaulted her multiple times over a year-and-a-half, causing injuries that included bleeding and bruising.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Dallas County by Dacoda Jones comes after she made domestic violence allegations in a series of social media posts last month. She is seeking more than $1 million in the lawsuit, which says the assaults happened at their homes in Dallas and suburban Kansas City.
In the lawsuit, Jones accuses Rice of strangling her in December 2023 after an “escalation in violent behavior” and that he continued to assault her over the course of their relationship, through July 2025. Jones’ attorney did not immediately respond to a question from The Associated Press on whether police had ever been called related to these incidents.
The lawsuit said Rice has “grabbed, choked, strangled, pushed, thrown, scratched, hit, and headbutted” Jones, in addition to hitting her with objects. The lawsuit said Rice has also thrown objects, punched walls and broken furniture, and that many of these incidents happened when Jones, who has two children with Rice, was pregnant.
Her injuries have included “bleeding, swelling, bruising and other pain and physical injury,” according to the lawsuit.
Agents listed for Rice did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on Wednesday. An attorney for Rice also did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Chiefs said they were aware of the lawsuit and remain in communication with the NFL. The NFL said the matter remains under review.
Rice missed the first six games of last season following an NFL suspension for his role in a high-speed crash on a Dallas highway that left multiple people injured during the 2024 offseason. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years’ probation after pleading guilty to third-degree felony charges of collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury.
Rice finished with 53 catches for 571 yards and five touchdowns as Kansas City went 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
Paris
Police arrest 11 in the beating death of a far-right student in France
PARIS (AP) — French police investigating the beating of a far-right militant who died of brain injuries have arrested 11 people, prosecutors said Wednesday, in a case adding fuel to long-standing divides in French politics ahead of presidential elections in 2027.
Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old student described as a fervent nationalist, died in a hospital on Saturday. He was beaten two days earlier by a group of people in the city of Lyon, in fighting that erupted between far-left and far-right supporters on the margins of a student meeting where a far-left lawmaker, Rima Hassan, was a keynote speaker.
An autopsy found that Deranque suffered a fractured skull and fatal brain injuries, according to Lyon’s prosecutor, Thierry Dran. He launched the police investigation for homicide and other potential criminal charges. Dran’s office said police detained a man and a woman on Wednesday morning, with nine other people taken into custody on Tuesday night.
Hassan, a French-Palestinian who was born in a Syrian refugee camp, is a European Parliament lawmaker for the far-left France Unbowed party. In a post on X after the attack on Deranque but before he died of his injuries, Hassan expressed “horror” over the violence and condemned it.
Deranque’s death triggered a storm of recriminations, mostly blaming France Unbowed. Its opponents accuse it of fomenting violence and tensions with its combative far-left politics, which include fierce criticism of Israel.
The party is led by veteran hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist who stood for the presidency in 2012, 2017 and 2022 and failed to advance to the decisive run-off round. He is preparing for another expected run next year, when President Emmanuel Macron ‘s second and last term ends.
Mélenchon insisted Tuesday that France Unbowed bore no blame for the tragedy in Lyon, saying: “We have absolutely nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with the death of this young Deranque.”
But the 11 people in police custody include the parliamentary aide of a France Unbowed lawmaker, French media reported. The lawmaker, Raphaël Arnault, confirmed the aide’s arrest in a post on X without giving the cause.
Arnault said he is ending the aide’s contract.
Violence has long been a persistent feature of French politics. Far-left and far-right factions harbor long-standing, intense and sometimes violent disregard for each other, although deaths in clashes between them have been rare in recent decades.
France is holding municipal elections next month. With campaigning in full swing, opponents of France Unbowed on the right and far-right laid blame for Deranque’s death on Mélenchon’s party, accusing it of fueling violence and appealing to voters not to support it.
Criticism also came from prominent figures on the left, including former French President François Hollande. He said the mainstream left, including his Socialist Party, must not team up again with Mélenchon’s party for the upcoming elections, as they did in the past.
“The relationship with France Unbowed is over,” he said.
New York
Jurors deliberate in trial over killings of 4 men as they slept on NYC streets
NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors deliberated Thursday in the trial of a man who beat four people to death as they slept on New York City’s streets. His lawyers acknowledge he did it but argue he was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible.
In an early signal from the jury’s closed-door discussions, the panel asked Thursday to re-hear parts of a defense psychologist’s testimony in which a prosecutor asked whether Randy Santos understood that his attacks were morally wrong.
Santos, 31, was arrested with a bloody metal bar in his hands shortly after the October 2019 rampage. It spurred scrutiny of the city’s struggles to aid and protect a homeless population that had reached record size.
Santos was homeless, as were some of the victims. The slain men — Chuen Kok, Anthony Manson, Florencio Moran and Nazario Vásquez Villegas — ranged in age from 39 to 83. Santos has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in their deaths and to attempted murder and assault charges involving other men in the hours and days before the killings in New York’s Chinatown.
Santos had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his lawyers argued that he sincerely believed he heard voices saying he had to kill 40 people or would die himself.
Defense attorney Arnold Levine contended in a closing argument Wednesday that Santos might have recognized he could land in legal trouble but couldn’t appreciate that what he was doing was morally wrong. The moral factor would be enough — if jurors accept it and agree that mental illness caused it — to support his insanity defense.
“The only explanation was Randy’s psychosis. ... It’s the only thing that explains what happened,” Levine told jurors, adding that “psychosis replaced Randy’s moral judgment.”
Prosecutors say Santos realized the attacks were both illegal and immoral. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson emphasized Wednesday that Santos sometimes looked out for potential witnesses and that he told a psychiatrist in 2024: “I know it’s not a good action.”
“Despite his illness, he was able to make a determination that what he was doing was wrong,” Peterson said in his summation.
The Dominican-born Santos, who’s following the trial via a Spanish-language interpreter, listened without showing much reaction to the summations. At one point, he briefly fluttered his hands near his face as Levine described a delusional Santos lashing out at his own grandfather long before the Chinatown killings.
If the jury rejects Santos’ insanity defense and convicts him, he could be sentenced to life in prison. If the jury instead finds him not responsible, he could be involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment for as long as officials and a court deem necessary.
