BIO MA GETS LAST LAUGH
Custody winner’s ‘karma’ disbarment
A Manhattan real-estate attorney who won a landmark custody case against her ex-partner — defeating her child’s biological mom — has now put her parental rights in jeopardy with a criminal conviction and legal disbarment.
“Karma’s a wonderful thing,” crowed Brook Altman, who lost custody of her 6-year-old daughter, Harrison, in 2012 after a judge found that her ex Allison Scollar was the “more responsible parent.”
“Responsible?” scoffed Altman. “She was an attorney who was stealing money right under everyone’s noses.”
Scollar, 55, was disbarred Thursday after it was revealed that she swiped $2 million from client escrow accounts.
The now-ex-lawyer pleaded guilty to grand larceny in March 2016, but her case was sealed as part of a cooperation agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
Details of the conviction were released Thursday in a Manhattan appeals court ruling that yanked her law license.
Scollar claims she was caught up in an extortion ring led by an Israeli con man posing as a Mossad agent. In 2016 Eli Luski was charged with taking $5 million from attorney escrow accounts, using the dough on a mistress and a million-dollar Jersey manse.
Luski recruited two co-defendants — Scollar’s longtime pals Jay Katz and his attorney brother David Katz — to pull off the scam. Scollar said the Katz brothers were “extremely supportive” during her bitter custody battle with Altman, so she was “susceptible to their requests” to hand over the client funds.
“Over time they kept using and abusing me,” she told The Post. “Once I wrote the first check I was a goner.”
Luski died while the charges were pending. The Katz brothers received between six months to a year of prison plus more than $830,000 in fines at their sentencing last November.
Scollar dodged jail time by ratting out the brothers, but she was ordered to repay $600,000 in stolen escrow funds.
And her ex, an Emmy Awardwinning producer who helped launch Martha Stewart’s TV show, plans to seek full custody of daughter Harrison, now 11.
Currently the two moms share equal parenting time, but Scollar has legal custody.
“Lying, cheating, stealing and hurting other people is just not how we move in the world and that’s not what I want for my daughter,” said Altman.
In 2012, Manhattan Family Court Judge Gloria Sosa-Lintner awarded custody to Scollar, who is Harrison’s adoptive mom but has no biological ties to the child. The decision was the first of its kind in New York.