NEW YORK — The man who billed his own employer for brokerage work that never happened will spend 11 years in federal prison. Jared Solomon, 49, a former vice president of leasing at Vornado Realty Trust, was sentenced on Thursday, November 5, 2026, in the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan for the scheme that prosecutors say took more than $9.5 million from the real estate giant. Solomon — pale, 20 pounds lighter than at his trial, in a tan prison uniform with his legs shackled — wept as he addressed the court. "To be clear and to be completely blunt, I engaged in fraud," he said, telling the judge he had acted with a "complete lack of a moral compass."
Source: The Real Deal — Jared Solomon Gets 11 Years in Prison For Vornado Fraud, Nov 5, 2026
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska imposed the 11-year term — exactly what the prosecution had asked for. Solomon's defense team had asked for four years in prison with five years of supervised release, pointing out, among other arguments, that the government's requested 11 years was just three months less than Elizabeth Holmes received for the $400 million Theranos fraud. Judge Preska was unmoved: Solomon's crime, she said, required a serious sentence in order to deter others who might try the same thing.
The conviction: four counts, a week-long trial
Solomon was convicted at trial in April 2026 on two counts of bank fraud and one count each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, announcing that verdict, called it "a decade-long scheme to defraud his former employer of over $9.5 million" and said Solomon had forged signatures and lied to banks. The trial lasted about a week, and, as The Real Deal reported from the courtroom coverage, the jury did not deliberate long — about an hour and a half — before returning a unanimous guilty verdict on all counts. The maximum potential sentence across the counts was 82 years; the advisory federal sentencing guidelines, as reported ahead of sentencing, pointed to a range of roughly 13 to 16 years.
How the scheme worked: fake brokers on the other side of his own deals
Solomon worked for 16 years at Vornado, one of Manhattan's largest commercial landlords, in its leasing department — a prized seat that included overseeing the giant digital billboard atop the REIT's 1540 Broadway office tower in Times Square. According to the case as laid out by prosecutors and reported by The Real Deal, Solomon created a pair of fake brokerages and ran them through burner email accounts and phone numbers, making it appear that the brokerages represented tenants leasing space from Vornado. In fact, those tenants did not use brokers at all: it was Solomon on the other side of the deal the whole time, billing his own employer for brokerage commissions on work that was never done, year after year.
How it unravelled: fired for his real job, caught by a tenant
The fraud did not end because an auditor caught it. Solomon was also, by the company's account, not doing well at his actual job, and in December 2023 Vornado fired him for unrelated performance issues. Only then, when the company spoke to one of its tenants, did it realize Solomon had submitted invoices for bogus brokerage work. He was indicted a year later and went to trial in the spring of 2026. His attorney argued at trial that his brokerages were legitimate businesses that had done bona fide work — and that he had simply never told Vornado about his side business. The jury rejected that account.
"I desperately wanted to leave Vornado"
In a pre-sentencing memo, Solomon and his attorney described an unrelenting workplace of pressure to close deals, hit performance metrics and meet quarterly goals. He wrote that he had prioritized work over family, damaging his home life and his emotional and mental health. "Over the years, I desperately wanted to leave Vornado," Solomon wrote. "Yet despite a dozen interviews I was told time and again, due to conflict between companies, 'we cannot hire you directly from Vornado.'" His attorney wrote: "Jared remained in an environment that had become a significant source of stress and unhappiness. He did not have a clear path forward. His mental health was deteriorating, his relationships with his children, wife and friends were strained, his professional life was untenable, and, as a result, his judgment suffered." The memo did not persuade the judge to go below the government's request.
Federal prosecutors said at conviction that Solomon spent the fraud proceeds on a $4.5 million house in Purchase, New York, an apartment on the Upper East Side, a country club membership and a Porsche, among other luxury expenses. The government is now working on a forfeiture plan for two of the properties bought with the stolen money — the Upper East Side apartment, bought for $3.6 million, and a Westchester home valued at $4.2 million in the sentencing report — in order to recoup the stolen money, The Real Deal reported.
Why a leasing-desk fraud matters beyond one REIT
Brokerage commissions are the lubricant of Manhattan commercial leasing: landlords routinely pay brokers who bring tenants, and the system runs on trust that the broker across the table is real and independent. Solomon's scheme sat inside that trust — a senior insider manufacturing the 'other side' of his own deals with fake firms and burner contacts. That is why the sentencing judge framed the punishment around deterrence, and why the case has been followed closely in New York real estate: the loss figure, $9.5 million over years of invoices, was built not by an outsider hacking a system but by an executive billing the system from within. For New York's large Punjabi and wider South Asian community of property owners, brokers, contractors and small-business tenants, the case is a plain-language lesson in how commission fraud works and what it costs when it is caught.
What happens next
Solomon has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his conviction in April, and he now begins an 11-year federal prison term; federal sentences carry no parole. The government's forfeiture work continues: recovering the two properties bought with the proceeds — the $3.6 million Upper East Side apartment and the Westchester home — is the mechanism prosecutors are using to recoup the stolen money for Vornado. A separate civil claim over the fraud proceeds, reported during the pre-sentencing phase, also remains part of the case's tail. Solomon's lawyers can appeal the sentence; no appeal had been reported as of the sentencing hearing on November 5.