“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
― Groucho Marx

After several decades in the same apartment I decided to take stock of what I had accomplished — or not.

My landlord, two dentists who purloined hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Manhattan real estate from family friends — Jews living in Queens and who, through a Rabbi’s introduction, permitted these thieves to first manage their property then own it and were forced to stand by and watch them proceed, almost immediately, to nearly first destroy then milk the property. I, too, had to stand by an watch and experience this while paying rent!

First, these dentists evicted or harassed out every one of the roughly 50 rent-stabilized tenants in the building when they took over. Luxury Decontrol permitted landlords to increase rents as high as they wanted once a tenant of record, who had renewal rights, left. It didn’t matter how or why. This facilitated converting the apartments to market rate. This incentivized Mitch & Murray (Glengarry Glen Ross characters) who, while allowing my building to deteriorate, used the courts and were assisted by friendly (bribed) HPD and Buildings Department personnel using a tried and true process. Remember, if you are a tenant being forced into court you must pay a lawyer and also continue to pay rent. Even if you win your case in court you still pay a lawyer AND rent. So, most tenants wound up being evicted or accepting a settlement to leave because they also owed their lawyer.

Second, Mitch & Murray were looking at pure income. Their kids all went to the best schools — and, why not? The tenants paid for them and the dentists had no mortgage. When you steal a building, especially one with no mortgage, rent is pure profit. But, as we all know greed knows no limits. And, think about how arrogant owning millions of dollars worth of Manhattan real estate free and clear can make you. So, while not paying people who did certain work on the building, they used all of the income for themselves. Both of them had houses on Long Island and had materials first shipped to my building. Then they transferred it all to their homes while using workers (Green card slaves from Poland mostly) to create fabulous homes. This is what Helmsley got prison for.

All of this was at the expense of living conditions which we, the legitimate tenants who had been rented apartments by the former owner, an Italian by the name of Calleo who failed in his attempt to turn the buiding into a condo, had to endure. We had people living in illegal apartments (now legalized by the tenants under the Loft Law), numerous illegal occupancies, and a sex-trafficking operation disguised as a model agency. Mitch reportedly used those under-aged services himself before he died suspiciously leaving it all to Murray. No one in their employ will talk about it.

The Courts were warned, NYPD was warned, HPD was warned, the Buildings Department was warned (but still aided the landlord in conducting illrgal evictions) and the Community Board was apprised and solicited but ignored the entreaties and outrageous fraud. (A former Chair of Community Board #2 laughed at me when I told him of the abuse.)

Nothing has worked and after decades of abusing, harassing and intimidating tenants the same cabal run by Mitch & Murray, people who have assisted them in this swindle, and workers who have been underpaid and abused themselves — have continued this enterprise and prospered.

In my case, in addition to the abuse, harassment and persecution (legal and religious), this cabal of criminals has even reached out to the recently incarcerated D.A. Thomas Spota on Long Island (a recent star of the Netflix documentary ‘Gone Girls’) and Assistant Stavrides in an attempt to punish me and my family me for making complaints and suing them for damages.

Criminal landlords should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Not simply fined for operating a criminal enterprise. You may be next!