February 23, 2005

Contact: Lynn Kimbrough, 720-913-9025 

CHILD VICTIM AWARDED RECORD AMOUNT

 OF CONFISCATION FUNDS

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has announced today that a 9-year-old victim of attempted sexual assault on a child has been awarded more than $129,000 in confiscation funds. 

The award is the largest confiscation amount awarded to a victim in the history of Denver’s property confiscation program.  The money, more than $129,000, is proceeds from the sale of a house confiscated from Alfred Kaufman.  Kaufman was known as the “cat man” because children were lured into his house to play with his cats. 

Kaufman was found guilty by a Denver jury of attempted sexual assault on a child in October of 2003 and sentenced to 6 years in prison in January of 2004 by District Court Judge R. Michael Mullins.  In April 2004 his house was declared a public nuisance and it was sold at auction in October 2004.  The award will be placed in a trust fund for the victim.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

Denver Deputy DA Neal Richardson has worked on the confiscation portion of the case for more than a year after being approached by Lt. Donna Starr-Gimeno of the Denver Police Public Nuisance Abatement Unit. The civil complaint for abatement and forfeiture of Kaufman’s house as a public nuisance was filed in February 2004.  On April 7, 2004, the court entered a default judgment finding that the house was a Class 1 Public Nuisance and ordered it forfeited and sold.  On October 26, 2004, after the six month period to challenge the judgment had expired, the house was sold at public auction, netting just more than $129,000 in proceeds.

A purchaser of seized property must undergo a background check before a sale of seized property is final to ensure that a nuisance owner is not replaced with another nuisance owner. In this case, the purchaser was Daniel H. Hoffman, a local real estate broker.  Mr. Hoffman made a commitment to completely remodel the residence and recent inspection of the property shows he has kept this commitment to the City and to his neighbors in the 3800 block of Yates Street. (Information and pictures about the renovated home are online at www.3861Yates.com)

Nuisance abatement and asset forfeiture are often used for drug offenses and other vice related crimes, which are not “victimless” but typically lack an identifiable victim.  These laws can also be used for felony-level crimes with identifiable victims. The Denver District Attorney’s office has procured awards of forfeiture proceeds in the past in a variety of cases, ranging from a seriously injured pedestrian struck by a hit-and-run driver, to an elderly victim of a fraudulent roofing scheme (in those cases proceeds from seized vehicles were distributed).  Large awards to victims are uncommon simply because criminals rarely use valuable property in the course of crimes with identifiable victims.

The additional benefit of property confiscation in this case is that it removed an extremely negative element from this neighborhood.  Without intervention through the nuisance abatement process the defendant would have had an opportunity to keep the house and move back into it when he got out of prison.

The affidavit filed in support of the forfeiture case, prepared by Detective Sara Rino of the Denver Police public nuisance abatement unit, recounts a fifty-year pattern of arrests of this perpetrator for similar incidents.  However, he was only convicted for this last offense (although two of his previous victims was permitted to testify at the criminal trial in this case). 

Forfeiture in Colorado usually requires that a criminal conviction occur first.  The success of the nuisance abatement case could not have occurred without the work of the prosecution team in the criminal case: Deputy District Attorneys Mychael Dave and Ryan Younggren, and Victim Advocate Deborah Bloch (who continued to assist the victim throughout the civil case).  Credit for the conviction also goes to Detective Randall Chastain of the Denver Police Department Sex Crimes Unit who was the original investigating detective on the case.

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