Owners of strip club where Sean Bell was killed nabbed in $2M mortgage fraud scam

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Written by: 195 on Mar 10, 2010

The mother-and-son owners of the strip club where Sean Bell was killed were nabbed Tuesday in a $2 million mortgage fraud scam.

Queens prosecutors say Martina Duran, 57, and Roger Arias, 36, used identities stolen from the dead and the elderly to buy and sell three properties.

One victim was an elderly woman from the Dominican Republic who had never set foot on U.S. soil, prosecutors say.

Duran pocketed $250,000 from the July 2006 sale of a $500,000 South Ozone Park home, prosecutors said.

"These type of financial crimes have real-life consequences and will not be tolerated," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Duran and Arias were each being held in lieu of $250,000 bond following arraignment.

Duran boasted to investigators that she had more than $1 million in assets in the Dominican Republic and needed armed guards to escort her throughout the country.

She and her son owned the defunct Club Kalua, where Bell was fatally shot in 2006 by cops probing reports of prostitution.

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