‘Tyrant’ landlord
Tenant's tormentor as bad as Madoff: AG
Calling him the Bernie Madoff of real estate, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hit a notorious Manhattan landlord with criminal charges and a civil suit Monday for mortgage fraud and strong-arming tenants out of rent-stabilized apartments by using an ex-cop to intimidate them.
Steven Croman — whose portfolio includes 140 buildings — was charged with filing fraudulent paperwork to obtain tens of millions of dollars in bank loans, according to the AG’s Office, which has been investigating him for two years.
“This guy is essentially the Bernie Madoff of landlords,” Schneiderman said at a press conference. “These are the most serious set of criminal charges brought against a bad landlord in anyone’s living memory.”
Croman, 49, and mortgage broker Barry Swartz, 53, pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen counts of grand larceny, scheme to defraud and other charges.
Croman allegedly inflated his rental income on mortgage documents to score more than $45 million in loans, according to the AG’s Office.
The landlord built his real-estate empire by buying up buildings filled with rent-regulated tenants and then embarked on an aggressive effort to push them out, Schneiderman said.
Croman — whose son was caught on video belittling an Uber driver in March — allegedly used former NYPD cop Anthony Falconite, whom he called his “secret weapon,” to frighten and intimidate residents, Schneiderman alleges in a civil suit.
Falconite dangled paltry cash buyouts — sometimes a few thousand dollars — to manipulate confused and panicked tenants into leaving their homes, the suit charges.
The ex-cop allegedly posed as a construction worker, UPS deliveryman or building manager to illegally enter apartments and menace residents. He told those who refused to move that they would be arrested by his NYPD pals, Schneiderman charged.
In his fever to quickly create high-rent units, Croman also routinely ignored construction laws and performed work with- out permits more than 175 times, authorities said.
Cynthia Chaffee, who lives in one of Croman’s Gramercy properties, called him a “tyrant.”
“He tried to break us emotionally and financially,” she said at the press conference.
Croman’s lawyer, Ben Brafman, says he intends to address the charges in a “responsible fashion.”