Man accused of fraud claiming to own a historic Manhattan hotel where he had been living rent-free for years was declared unfit to stand trial, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Doctors who examined Mickey Barreto determined that he is not mentally competent to face criminal charges, and prosecutors confirmed the results during a court hearing Wednesday, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

Judge Cori Weston gave Barreto until Nov. 13 to find appropriate inpatient psychiatric care, Bragg’s office said.

Barreto had been receiving outpatient treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues, but doctors concluded after a recent evaluation that he did not fully understand the criminal process, the New York Times first reported.

Barreto dismissed allegations of a drug problem and said prosecutors are trying to hospitalize him because they didn’t have a strong case against him. He sees some advantages.

“It went from being hostile, ‘He’s a criminal’ to, oh, they don’t talk about crime anymore. Now the main thing is like, ‘Oh, poor thing.’ Finally, we convinced him to seek treatment,’” Barreto told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Brian Hutchinson, Barreto’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment. But during Wednesday’s hearing, he said he planned to ask his client’s current treatment provider to accept him, the Times reported.

In February, prosecutors charged Barreto with 24 counts, including felony fraud and criminal contempt.

they say that he forged a deed to the New Yorker hotel in order to transfer ownership of the entire building to him.

He then attempted to collect rent from one of the hotel’s tenants and demanded the hotel’s bank transfer his accounts, among other measures.

Barreto began living at the hotel in 2018 after arguing in court that he had paid about $200 for a one-night stay and therefore had tenant rights, based on a quirk of the city’s housing laws and the fact that the hotel did not send a lawyer. to a key audience.

Barreto has said he lived in the hotel rent-free because the building’s owners, the Unification Church, never wanted to negotiate a lease with him, but they also couldn’t legally kick him out.

Now, your criminal case may be leading you into something of a loophole.

“So if you ask me if it’s any better, in a way it is. Because they don’t treat me like a criminal but like a crazy person,” Barreto told the AP.

Built in 1930, the massive Art Deco structure and its enormous red “New Yorker” sign is a much-photographed landmark in midtown Manhattan.

Muhammad Ali and other famous boxers stayed there when they had fights at nearby Madison Square Garden, a block away. Inventor Nikola Tesla even lived in one of its more than 1,000 rooms for a decade. And NBC broadcast from its Terrace Room.

But the New Yorker closed as a hotel in 1972 and was used for years for religious purposes before part of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994.