NEW ORLEANS — For the first time Thursday, a self-proclaimed real estate investor who says he helps save people’s distressed properties showed up for a court hearing in a case where he’s accused of stealing a house from a dead woman’s bankruptcy estate.
At least seven property owners in the New Orleans area have accused Jonathan Burden of filing false deeds or tricking them into signing documents in attempts to take their homes right out from under them.
Those allegations have been detailed in a WWL Investigation called “Un-Real Estate” since May. But Burden has never responded to the station’s requests for comment. He has repeatedly skipped out on court hearings and even failed to show up for a hearing when he sued an opposing attorney for “stalking” him on social media.
He recently hired a new attorney, Pius Obioha, who filed papers in the bankruptcy case last week arguing that Burden didn’t know about the complaint against him until he heard WWL Louisiana reported the judge had issued a warrant for Burden’s arrest. After trying to locate him, the U.S. Marshals Service considered Burden a “fugitive … on the run” all this week, up until he showed up in court with his attorneys Thursday afternoon.
Burden appeared in a black hoodie, on crutches and wearing a surgical mask. Obioha stood in front of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill and objected to the $26,800 in sanctions the judge had imposed. Obioha argued Burden wasn’t properly served with notice of the case. But in Burden’s own sworn statement filed in court last week, he said he received service of at least one of the court hearings held in the case in June.
Grabill fined Burden after ruling he had violated court orders by claiming ownership of Lorraine Robinson’s Central City fourplex after Robinson had filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Burden said in his sworn statement that Robinson sold the house to him for $9,500 in 2019, before the bankruptcy. But he never filed the transfer in the land records until after Robinson died this past January, more than two years after the house became part of the bankruptcy estate.
Grabill said most of the fines she imposed were for rent Burden collected from Robinson’s tenants since January, money the judge ruled should have gone to Robinson’s heir, her brother Johnnie, to pay her bankruptcy debts.
“He got the money,” Johnnie Robinson said after Thursday’s hearing. “And now he wants to act like he hurt. You know, God don't like ugly.”
Obioha appealed to Grabill for leniency, claiming that even if Burden did receive proper notice of the case, he’s not “sophisticated” and doesn’t understand bankruptcy court. Burden, however, once made money representing debtors in the bankruptcy court. The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an agent of the federal Justice Department, found Burden had duped 11 property owners into paying him to handle their bankruptcy cases even though he had no authority to do so.
The court fined Burden for the violations in 2020.
Obioha also said the WWL reports have hurt Burden’s business and asked Grabill to reduce the sanctions, even after she agreed to lower them from $26,800 to $15,000.
“$15,000 is stiff,” Obioha said. “He doesn’t have the funds. He’s been shut out of business. He’s walking on crutches and hasn’t had work for a long time.”
Until the WWL series began, Burden often bragged about his real estate “hustle” on social media, posting videos of himself convincing people to sign real estate documents that he claimed to use as “collateral.” In one video post, he stood outside the mansion of a widow facing foreclosure and said, “That monster I’m about to take down. Watch the master at work.” He then filmed himself convincing Kathryn Stewart, a widow facing a $400,000 debt on a reverse mortgage, to sign a document.
Burden called a “backup offer” in a text and said it was to buy her house for $700,000 if a pending offer for $1.1 million fell through. But then he filed the document in the land records, clouding the title. He went on Instgram and bragged, “It took me 4 hrs and 42 minutes in one setting to land this million dollar + whale on shore for a very minimal price!!!” He later agreed to withdraw the document from the records and allow Stewart to go forward with the $1.1 million sale, only if she paid him $85,000 to walk away.
But now, social media appears to be working against him. The popular Instagram account @nolastreets_history, with more than 87,000 followers, posted about the WWL story. Obioha asked Judge Grabill to issue a gag order in the case because of the media attention, but she refused, saying the court is a public forum.
Grabill did withdraw the arrest warrant after Burden appeared for the hearing. But she also gave Burden until Dec. 21 to pay $15,000 in certified funds to the court clerk, before he gets to argue in January whether he was properly notified about the case.
Obioha promised Grabill his client would comply with her orders from now on and show up for all hearings. But several other alleged victims say Burden has made such promises before, only to change attorneys and evade punishment.
For example, he’s never answered Derrick Breston’s allegations that Burden used a forged deed with Breston's dead mother's signature on it to take ownership of Breston's property in the Bywater, then turned around the same day and sold it for a $100,000 profit.
Breston and Clarence Roby Jr., an attorney representing another of Burden’s alleged victims, are calling on the FBI or New Orleans Police to arrest Burden.
“Authorities have to step in and do something about this gentleman because he's this cocky and he's going to keep on,” Breston said. “So, they need to do something with him, you know, just get him and hold onto him.”
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