Ex-landlords are fined $79,000, face trial
By MATT GRYTA
News Staff Reporter
6/21/2005 
Two former Buffalo landlords were fined more than $79,000 on Monday and told that they face trial next month on further city housing and health code violations at their former city properties.
Venere Hutchinson, 29, and his wife, Dana, 33, who were once cited as among the city's worst slumlords, received the sentence in Housing Court from Judge Henry J. Nowak. The judge told the couple that unless they pay their fines in the next 30 days, they face jail terms.
Venere Hutchinson was ordered to pay $58,300 in fines on five properties, and Dana Hutchinson was ordered to pay $21,000 in fines on five other properties in which she was the listed owner.
The Hutchinsons have been in custody since being found about two months ago in Tennessee. Police said they were using fake identifications and were wanted in Buffalo on housing and health code violations linked to their properties.
Peter J. Savage III, the city's Housing Court prosecutor, said the city has spent $115,000 to demolish Hutchinson properties and faces an additional $30,000 in estimated demolition expenses on others.
Savage and Sheila M. Burke, the Erie County Health Department's representative to Housing Court, said the Hutchinsons are due back in court July 7 to answer more housing and health code violations involving lead paint and structural problems on 11 of the couple's former properties.
The Hutchinsons face trial on multiple grand larceny and fraud charges linked to an alleged $2 million real estate swindle that defrauded at least five lending institutions.
They are accused of obtaining 40 city properties from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a few thousand dollars each and then fraudulently obtaining second mortgages for as much as $100,000 above each property's assessed value.
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