Slumlord admits fraud, set for jail

A LANDLORD NOTORIOUS for trying to drive out rent-stabilized tenants so he can collect higher rents pleaded guilty Tuesday and agreed to serve a year in jail.

Steve Croman, who owns 140 apartment buildings in Manhattan, confessed to mortgage and tax fraud in a criminal case brought by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a landlord being sent to jail for a year,” Ed Josephson, director of litigation for Legal Services said of the rare sentence. “It sends a really strong and important message to landlords throughout the city who, like Steve Croman, try to push tenants out.”

Croman (photo right) admitted in Manhattan Supreme Court to illegally obtaining $45 million in bank loans by inflating his rental income, claiming to lenders that he was receiving the market rate from rentstabilized units.

He will pay a $5 million tax settlement for failing to pay payroll taxes and spend a year in Rikers Island.

Croman, 50, still faces a civil suit filed by Schneiderman charging that he used a retired NYPD cop to intimidate tenants into taking buyouts, mostly in the hot real estate markets on the Lower East Side and East Harlem.

He called the cop, Anthony Falconite, his “secret weapon.” Falconite stalked tenants, broke into their apartments to read their mail, and followed them to their jobs to interview colleagues about where they actually live, the suit alleges.

As Croman entered his plea, a handful of his tenants watched with mixed emotions. Carmen Guzman, 54, who has lived in a Croman apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for 25 years, called the plea “a good sign to send to other people who do this.” Over the years, she says she’s waited months for needed repairs, received threats to terminate her lease, and had no electricity for a span of three months. “He will try little things, whatever he can get away with — like any good psychopath,” she said. Viv Ramos, who lives in a Croman building on the Upper East Side, was disappointed. “I think he got off with the lightest possible sentence.” Croman declined to comment as he left court. He will be sentence in September.