A man paid $200.57 for one night at a famous NYC hotel, then lived there rent-free for years. Now he could go to jail.

• Mickey Barreto booked a night at the New Yorker Hotel in 2018 for $200.57.

• He stayed for five years without paying rent because of local housing laws.

• Police arrested him in 2024. In February 2026, he pleaded guilty and will serve six months in prison.

A man who lived at the iconic New Yorker Hotel for five years without paying a cent in rent has been jailed.

Police arrested Mickey Barreto in February 2024 and charged him with filing fraudulent property records after trying to claim he owned the hotel, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.

Prosecutors said Barreto took advantage of little-known local housing laws to avoid thousands of dollars worth of rent and then tried to collect building rent from another tenant.

“As alleged, Mickey Barreto repeatedly fraudulently claimed ownership of one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, the New Yorker Hotel,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a 2024 statement.

According to the New York Times, Barreto faces 24 charges, including 14 counts of felony fraud. In February 2026, he pleaded guilty to felony filing a false instrument and was sentenced to six months in prison and five years of probation.

Barreto’s stay at the famed hotel dates back to 2018, when he first learned about New York City’s rent stabilization laws. In its heyday, the hotel hosted many dignitaries and celebrities, including Muhammad Ali and John F. Kennedy. The law gives tenants living in single rooms in buildings built before 1969 the right to demand a six-month lease.

In June 2018, Barreto stayed in room 2565 for one night with his partner, Matthew Hannan, and was charged $200.57.

The next day, Barreto applied for a six-month lease at the hotel, but was soon evicted.

Barreto, a California immigrant with a penchant for conspiracy theories who also claims to be the leader of a tribal community he founded in Brazil, refused to take “no” for an answer, The New York Times reported.

Barreto ended up caught in a web of lies

That July, he took the building’s owner, Holy Spirit Congregation for World Christian Unity, to housing court, claiming he was being unlawfully evicted. A representative from the church didn’t show up, so the judge sided with Barreto and the hotel had to give him the keys.

The two parties never agreed on the terms of the lease, and Barreto was living rent-free at the hotel because he couldn’t be evicted.

Soon, Barreto began portraying himself as the hotel’s owner and eventually demanded rent from TickTock restaurant, one of the building’s tenants.

Barreto also registered the hotel in his name with the city’s Department of Environmental Conservation as part of an effort to take control of the hotel’s bank account, the DA’s office said.

The Unification Church, which bought The New Yorker in 1976, sued Barreto, saying he represented himself as the hotel owner on LinkedIn and uploaded the forged deed to the city government’s website. A judge ordered Barreto to stop claiming he owned the building, but he continued to live there.

In 2023, Barreto again filed documents with the city claiming he was the owner of the building, at which point the District Attorney’s Office became involved.

Business Insider contacted Barreto through his company Mickey Barreto Missions in 2024 but did not receive a response before publication.

“I never intended to commit any fraud. I don’t believe I ever committed any fraud,” Barreto told The Associated Press. “And I never made a penny from it.”

The NYPD referred questions to the District Attorney’s Office when Business Insider asked for comment.

Correction: April 12, 2024 – An earlier version of this story misstated details of a legal claim filed by Barreto and the building owner. Barreto initially took the owners to housing court for illegal eviction, but a judge sided with him because representatives for the owners did not appear in court. The case was not before the state Supreme Court and no appeal was filed. This story has also been updated to clarify some details about the chronology of the parties’ legal dispute.

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