New York Daily News -
http://www.nydailynews.com
City's tax cheat hall of shame
By BOB PORT and WILLIAM SHERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Sunday, February 27th, 2005
Meet landlord
Yaakov Goldfeder, king of the city's property tax deadbeats with a $7.3 million tab. He is a hard man to track down. He has no listed phone number, his work address is a post office box and the managing agent registered with the city for his Brooklyn tenement has been dead for four years.
Goldfeder's six-story apartment building in Flatbush is so dilapidated, the city can expect more costs than benefits if it seizes the property to offset the mounting tax bill.
He tops a list of shame of hundreds of tax deadbeats who deprive the city of hundreds of millions of dollars while the rest of us struggle to pay our dues.
Six hundred fifty-nine building owners owe New York City some $327 million altogether in unpaid property tax, interest or repair costs.
He heads a disgraced top 10 that includes:
2. Horace Bullard, whose Coney Island Amusements Inc. owes $6.7 million in taxes, interest and penalties on a vacant 4-acre tract adjacent to Coney Island Amusement Park.
3. Andonis Morfesis of Five Pack LLC and Dream Realty Inc. He owes $4.4 million, including $2.2 million in taxes, interest, penalties and emergency maintenance for a 22-unit, six-story apartment building on Broadway just south of 125th St. in Harlem and $2 million for a 36-unit, six-story apartment building at 21 Fort Washington Ave. in Washington Heights.
4. Dr. Josephine English, 1058 Bushwick Ave. Corp., who owes $4.3 million in taxes, interest and penalties on a 54-unit, six-story apartment building at Bushwick Ave. and Linden St. in Brooklyn where English's son lives.
5. Abdur Rahman Farrakhan of Noble Drew Ali Plaza Housing Corp., who owes the city $3.8 million in taxes, interest, penalties and emergency maintenance for a 385-unit apartment complex at 230-240 Lott Ave. in Brownsville, Brooklyn, that brings Farrakhan millions in federal subsidies and city homeless shelter rents.
Using computer records, with help from the city Department of Finance, the Daily News catalogued the city's 10 biggest debtors and the buildings they own. Deadbeats identified by The News range from shadowy slumlords to community activists to established real estate investors.
Those owners set up partnerships or corporations for each building, shielding them personally from tax bills. Often, they milk the buildings and tenants for rent, scrimp on maintenance and ignore tax notices with impunity.
When debts surpass the building's value, they can declare bankruptcy, delaying for years any property foreclosure by the city.
"We want to put tax-delinquent owners on notice that if you don't pay, you're going to lose your building," said Shaun Donovan, the city's commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development.
Several landlords and their attorneys argued that their rent sometimes will not cover taxes. Tenants, they said, often create slums by damaging their apartments.
Goldfeder's astounding debt is owed on a 71-unit building at 265 Hawthorne St. in Brooklyn. Apartments there are plagued by leaks, cracked plaster, broken doors and vermin, according to HPD inspection records.
City officials have classified Goldfeder's building as "distressed," a euphemism for a beyond-hope slum on a waiting list for the city to seize the structure and appoint a third-party developer to rehab it.
"We systematically redevelop tax-delinquent buildings and convey them to responsible new owners," Donovan said. "These rehabbed buildings are now providing much-needed safe, decent and affordable housing to New Yorkers."
But HPD must continually confront deadbeats trying to hide.
Ari Weiss, listed as an officer of Goldfeder's corporation, 265 Realty Associates, at first claimed he did not know Goldfeder and had "nothing to do with the building."
"Maybe I had something to do with the building 20 years ago," Weiss then said. "Okay, maybe I do know Goldfeder," he added. "I don't want to lie to you."
Goldfeder's attorneys declined to return phone calls.
The city's second-biggest debtor is a completely different story. Developer Horace Bullard owes New Yorkers $6.7 million in back taxes and interest on a 4-acre vacant tract beside Coney Island Amusement Park.
The lot was once the site of the rusting Thunderbolt roller coaster, immortalized in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," until the city abruptly demolished the rickety contraption in 2000 to clear the skyline beside its new KeySpan Stadium for minor-league baseball.
Bullard was horrified. He sued and won, but was not awarded any monetary damages. He withheld taxes. As the city moved to seize the tract last year, he declared bankruptcy. In court, he claims a $16.5 million contract to sell the land eventually will cover the city tax bill.
Bullard declined to comment.
Other tax deadbeats have an ax to grind with the city.
Dr. Josephine English, 84, a retired obstetrician, owns a 54-unit apartment building on Bushwick Ave. in Brooklyn that owes $4.3 million in taxes, penalties and 18% interest compounding daily.
That crushing interest debt began to mount when the city sold a tax lien on her unpaid bill - the city's latest tool to enforce tax collections.
English, a longtime real estate investor in Brooklyn's black communities, turned to bankruptcy court to buy time. "I put a fortune into that building," she said. She doesn't want the city to seize it.
"They'd give it to their friends, and most of their friends are Jewish," English said. "Rows and rows of houses are going to whites, and blacks are being put out. New York is only going to be for the rich people."
English's bankruptcy lawyer, Charles Simpson, said the doctor hopes to obtain a mortgage to settle her taxes. "She has a good heart," Simpson said. "One could say she's a lousy businessman."
Landlord Bert Brown, who owns a six-story, 39-unit building in Williamsburg, was a man of few words when asked by The News why he has not paid $3.1 million in taxes due on his building.
"Maybe you'd like to make me a loan," Brown said. "Otherwise, I'm not in the mood to talk, I don't have the time, goodbye."
Brown's building has a history of mice, roaches and other vermin, broken floors, leaky faucets, defective plaster and other housing code violations, according to city inspection records.
The city has targeted the dwelling for redevelopment. For now, Brown is collecting rents.
A vacant lot and seven buildings on the west side of Ninth Ave. between 37th and 38th Sts. have languished in bankruptcy court nine years as the tax debt grew to $2.9 million.
"I've been fighting the tax bill since 1981," said Martin Fine, the original owner, now a part owner, who acknowledged legal costs for his battle have cost him more than the tax he originally owed.
"He truly believes he's being screwed, and that's why he's fighting it," said Fine's attorney, Howard Karasik.
"The assessed value of the buildings was higher than the gross income from all the rents," Fine said.
Jay Rand's family lives in splendor - a gorgeous, bright, nine-room upper West Side apartment with a double living room, beautifully polished floors and a maid.
Meanwhile, tenants at his six-story walkup in the Bronx live in squalor. Rand is the principal of Trucking Stratford Inc., which owns the building and owes the city $2.9 million in property taxes.
Mold, mildew, broken locks, broken windows, leaks, broken and defective plaster, broken gas ranges, roaches and broken faucets are among the many code violations. Retired housing cop Clarence Johnson, 78, pays $508 a month for a dark, leaking, second-floor unit.
"I've been asking for a radiator in the bedroom for years and he won't put one in," Johnson said. "The other radiator in the apartment provides no heat."
Rand declined to comment. "The real story is the prior owner, not him," said his lawyer, Schuyler Carroll. "We don't believe we owe the taxes, and we will hopefully resolve this."
Other deadbeats identified by The News have vanished or become impossible to reach.
Luis Canela headed a business called Grupo Management Inc., which walked away from a 25-unit apartment in Washington Heights that today owes the city $2.1 million. Tenants were left to gather up cash each month to pay Con Ed for lights.
"The building was shot," said Victor Morisete-Romero, appointed by housing court to manage the building. "There were rats, no heat or hot water, and the roof was leaking."
"I have no idea where the owners are," Morisete-Romero said. "They never show up in court. They never claim anything."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/v-pfriendly/story/284770p-243960c.html
