A Manhattan real estate broker will spend the next three to nine years of his life in jail after he was found guilty of burglarizing a $7.6 million townhouse on the Upper West Side.
So how did he choose his target? He was the broker who handled the sale of the house.
David Kim, formerly of the Corcoran Group, sold the five-story townhouse to art deal Tina Kim and her husband, Jae Chung, in December 2012 for $7.6 million.
He then returned to the home approximately eight months later while the couple was vacationing in the Hamptons and stole more than $500,000 worth of luxury goods, according to a report in the New York Post.
How’d Kim get into the house? Turns out they'd never changed the locks.
From an earlier New York Post report:
Tina Kim’s family, which employs a maid, nanny and personal driver, never changed the locks on the doors, allowing the agent allegedly to slip inside the home and steal their pricey possessions, including rare statues and portraits.
According a new report from the Post, David Kim plead guilty to grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, forgery and two counts of identity theft in September as part of a plea deal and was sentenced to three to nine years in jail on Monday.
According to an earlier report from the Post, David Kim made repeated trips to the home over a 72-hour period, reportedly walking away with Louis Vuitton accessories, a Gucci wallet, a crystal pen, an Hermès passport holder, electronics and artwork.
One source told the Post that Kim decorated his apartment with stolen artwork and used the couple’s American Express card to make $50,000 in purchases at various shops.
Police were subsequently able to recover stolen property from Kim’s apartment, including the art he’d hung on his walls.
From the Post report:
Before the crooked broker was sentenced by Justice Gregory Carro on Monday, Chung blasted Kim for what he did to his family, in a letter read by Assistant District Attorney Randolph Clarke Jr.
“Even more than the loss of our property, we now live and sleep in a house where we worry that an intruder can enter and do us harm,” Chung wrote.
