By George Capsis
“Croman’s going to court tomorrow. Want to come?” offered Nelly Godfrey of the now City Marshall-padlocked Christopher Street restaurant, Lima’s Taste, victim of the worst slum lord in recent City history, Steve Croman. According to Attorney General (AG) Eric Schneiderman, he is facing 25 years in prison.
At the entrance of the Criminal Court building, a group of about 25 Croman tenant victims stood waiting to jeeringly confront the owner of 140 Manhattan tenement buildings. Croman had hired an ex-cop, with the appropriate name Falconite, to harass the rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants into signing agreements to exit their apartments for token payments.
The sign indicating that “[t]he front aisle is reserved for attorneys” sent me to the second aisle where the first seat was occupied by a suited gentleman to whom I offered, “You have to be a lawyer.” He agreed, but I was waiting to meet Croman’s star defense attorney Benjamin Brafman who defended a rouge’s gallery of New York Post Page 5 miscreants and who lawyer scuttlebutt claimed was earning a one-million-dollar fee to keep Croman out of prison.
As chance would have it, Brafman arrived and came up to my next-seat companion, attorney Joel Cohen, and chatted with me. I concluded that they were both retained by Croman, so I offered to Brafman, “I understand you are being paid one million dollars to defend Croman,” which brought a wrinkled brow and hesitation. He blurted out “More, more.” Croman slipped in and sat behind Cohen and I turned to give him a smile of greeting; he returned it with perplexity.
The Croman case was called and the attorneys for the AG and Croman gathered in front of the judge’s desk for an inaudible conference. Then, the young female judge announced a postponement till November¾a classic tactic of Croman is legal delay to bleed his tenants who have to pay legal fees. Attorney Cohen offered that he had asked the AG for “some papers”.
I then confronted Brafman and asked if I could e-mail him questions and he offered, “It is better that way.” Our Joe Turco drafted a few but received “no comment”.
I went down in the elevator from the appropriate 13th floor with the anti-Cromanites when one confessed that he had confronted Croman. “What did you say?” came my quick question. “I told him I am Jewish and they say that the Jews killed Jesus and he had to behave better.”
For too long, the attitude has been that for-profit consultants or companies, with their money-making incentive and drive, could do a job more efficiently and better than City drudges.
George:
There is 2 errors in this article.
1) describe falconite as ex-nypd cop.
This is error it should be ex- nypd cop also ex-fire fighter and ex- fire Marshall. (Fdny recently wrote up on croman in report for emergency in building and refuse repair. )
2) what is November 3/4?
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Thanks for finally someone is recognizing ent control and rent stabilized apt together.
Thanks for this article
If you have been monitoring all that was going on, such as media related notification, and internet posting (all public record) and other resources available, we all can see what Croman got himself into now on the subject of being accused of tenant harassment, etc is not him working alone. It’s those people he hires who comes in supporting him makes high % of the problem. This include his lawyers and those hungry for the commission if a tenant is kicked out. These reps like lawyers and law firm come in start something then these lawyer may stay with the case or get drop out then new ones comes in taking over knowing no or not much history about the case and takes whatever that was forwarded for review and kept adding more fraud information into the case (eviction) the more Croman changes lawyer the more screw up he is hurting himself. If the case starter attorney screw up and get fires the replacement lawyer continue the screw up.
According to court record, at least Croman law firm was sued back by Croman tenant. RR is one of the law firm found conducting fraud /frivolous lawsuit and false eviction for Croman. And this law firm later have the nerve to sue Croman In Supreme Court for non pay. Other law firm Croman used that screwed him and started to file false claim court case are those law firm he is using with malpractice history.
Another lawyer M.F. He was outsourcing in law firm to help Croman with his needs and supported these innocent law firm with false document to push the court case. He held back proof that can proof those information he gave to these outsource attorney is not the truth. M.F. Also as notary public sign odd fake fraud affidavits for Croman and his employee. Now M.F. No longer works for Croman
Who is responsible for those false affidavit he signed off as notary public during those days he was employed for Croman ?
25 years for Croman would be nice but any jail time would be a victory, I am a victim of a landlord who would have succeeded in getting me out of my Greenwich Village rent controlled apartment if I didn’t have free legal representation as a union benefit of DC37. For months my scumlord went through an elaborate sceme of putting all kinds of junk in the hallways and put a rug, barbecue, plants and even cornstalks on the roof claiming that I was responsible for it all; he had one set of lawyers pursuing eviction for that while another set of lawyers kept my rent checks in order to claim non payment of rent. The union lawyers told me to wait for an eviction notice after which one phone call from them ended the matter and I haven’t been harassed since.
But lot’s of rent controlled and rent stabilized tenants have been harassed out of their apartments because they couldn’t afford all the legal fees to represent them. The thuglord Croman’s use of the bully “Falconite” is beyond civil court and Croman and “Falconite” should be tried in criminal court. Personally I’d like to see them hanging from the old hanging tree in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park.