NEWTON – An abandoned house on the shores of Lake Zoar piqued Eugene Tortorici’s interest.
The self-described entrepreneur wanted to buy property along the lake, a reservoir on the Housatonic River that snakes through four towns in lower Connecticut.
Tortorici saw the waterfront property just down Bankside Trail as an investment in the up-and-coming neighborhood.
The Little White House appears to have been abandoned – one of two abandoned properties that Tortorici, a Southbury resident, managed to find near the lake. Better yet, a neighbor suggested that the owner might be willing to sell.
But tracking down his wife, a Massachusetts man in his 60s, proved a challenge. Pulling records from the city led him to a dead phone number and PO box address.
“Being persistent in all the businesses I’ve had, I’m not going to stop there,” the 32-year-old said in a recent phone interview.
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Eugene Tortorici of Southbury bought a house in 2021 from what appeared to be the rightful owner. He eventually bought the house from the rightful owner and the police charged him with a crime for selling the house that didn’t belong to him. Thursday, August 11, 2022, Newtown, Conn.
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media
Although police records do not indicate the exact details of the owner’s search, Tortorisi, undeterred, conducted a name search of the realtor. It came back with three names – one of which was the contact information that led to the dead number. But when Tortorici called the second address on the list, someone picked up.
“It says yes, you found me. I’m the owner and I want to sell it,” Tortorisi said. “That was the scammer.”
It was a moment when an ordinary real estate deal turned strange. Because the voice Tortorici heard on the phone wasn’t the real owner, but someone who said the police had agreed to sell the house to Tortorici, pretending to be the owner.
Ultimately, the man Tortorisi spoke with on the phone that day was identified by investigators as Edwin Robert Lewis III of Wellington. Newtown police last month charged him with second-degree money laundering, first-degree identity theft, first-degree fraud, criminal impersonation and second-degree forgery.
Lewis has pleaded not guilty to all charges. “We intend to present evidence at the appropriate forum to establish his innocence,” the lawyer said in a statement last week.
Totorichi and the man agreed to a $65,000 purchase, records show.
“Fast forward a couple of months down the road, I’m totally going to buy it from lawyers,” Totorichi said. “He defrauded two law firms.”
The home was sold on July 26, 2021, records show.
Investigators believe the sale was made possible because Lewis’ name was too close to the real owner’s name. The sale became suspicious to police after the rightful owner called Newtown police on Aug. 24, 2021 and told them he believed his identity had been stolen, according to the order. A subsequent investigation led to his recent arrest.
A neighbor noticed that Tortorici was on the property and contacted the actual homeowner. “I thank God for him,” said Totorichi. “I would continue to invest at that time” in the property.
The neighbor told him that the owner had not sold the property. Tortorici was initially dismissive of his neighbor — that is, until the police intervened.
“I didn’t believe it,” he said. But the police told him that they were sure the person who agreed to sell him the house was not who he said he was. They triangulated the man’s cell phone, Tortorici said.
The arrest warrant shows police were able to use Lewis’ phone number and Virginia driver’s license to prove he was not the rightful owner of the property. When police ran his identity through the state police criminal records system, they found Lewis had been arrested in Wethersfield in 2007 and charged with second-degree fraud, credit card theft, second-degree forgery and criminal impersonation.
Details of that case were not immediately available.
Police also arrested Lewis in connection with the fraudulent sale in a deed of sale dated July 21, 2021, at a bank in South Windsor. The location of Lewis’ phone shows him near the bank that day, and a man matching his description is seen in the bank’s surveillance photo holding the documents in a notebook.
It was another clue that led Totorichi to believe he was meeting the real owner of the house. When a neighbor first expressed interest in the house, the owner told him that he had tried to change the electrical system of the house. Totorichi said the owner later denied this, but when he looked up Louis’ name, he learned he owned an electric company.
Records at the state Department of Consumer Protection show more than two dozen complaints have been filed against Lewis since 1996.
“The majority of complaints are related to conducting business without proper credentials or licenses,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.
The agency said Lewis held an Electric Unlimited contractor license at the end of 2000, and his Electric Unlimited journeyman license was revoked in 2006. In 2008, he was ordered to pay more than $6,000 in fines and restitution for doing electrical and plumbing work. Permits, there is a press release.
During the purchase, Tortorici said he only gave him a moment’s pause. One morning during closing, around 4:30 a.m., Tortorisi said he and his wife were awakened by a phone call from Lewis. He picked up, but Louis said he didn’t. Totorichi hangs up and says he called back, but Louis doesn’t answer.
“I remember getting this strange feeling,” Totorichi said. “I’m very sad about it.” Ready to back out of the deal, he calls the next day, but Louis makes up an excuse – he says he accidentally called Totorichi in his pocket on his way to work.
Tortorici opened the case and had to sit for an hour, but after about 5 months he was able to get his money back from the purchase. “I was happy,” he recalled. “I actually started crying on the front steps.”
He then got a call from the real owner’s attorney who pointed out that the house was still in his name. He offered to stop the claim of the house. The lawyer told him he would meet him at the door the next morning.
As the lawyer walked away with the papers, “I said, ‘Listen, if he wants to sell, it’s a long shot, if he wants to sell, let me know,'” Tortorici said.
A few days later, the lawyer called back and told him that the real owner wanted to sell the house.
A month later, Tortorici bought the house again — this time, with a different attorney and a different insurance policy, he said. The purchase price was $8,000 more than the original purchase price from Lewis.
Reached by phone Friday, the owner declined to comment other than to say, “I’m grateful that Newtown police completed their investigation and there was no violence at the time of the arrest.”
Court records show the owner later filed a lawsuit in Connecticut civil court seeking damages to identify him as the rightful owner. Tortorici was later cleared of his addiction.
Kent Mancini, an attorney for Kramer & Anderson who represented the wife in the suit, said this week that the suit is being run in parallel with the criminal case. He said he did not know about the second sale of the house.
Tortorici isn’t sure now what he plans to do with the house, suggesting he might fix it up and move in instead of flipping it, as he once planned.
“I will make it good, it will be a good property in the end,” he said.
After the sale closed, Tortorici said he and the real — now earlier — owner of the property went out to lunch. Tortorici considers him a friend. The two, as he put it, went through the call together.
“He didn’t do anything about it,” Tortorici said. “And that was the most horrible part for me, I caused all the problems for this poor man – because I was the one door, I was the one to call, I put all this into action.”
But, he said, “I believe you do the right thing in life, you live righteously, things will follow.” “You know the worst luck in my life turned out to be one of the best.”
