Exclusive | NYC couple performs rental shakedown using paper-trail scheme to keep the apartment their landlord wants to sell: Lawsuit

If you love something, let it go.But, in the case of one Brooklyn home, it’s not always so easy.A landlord is accusing a Section 8 tenant of orchestrating a brazen “shakedown” — using allegedly forged signatures, fake lease renewals, even a quiet exit to a new apartment — all while keeping its Borough Park condominium unit hostage, according to a new lawsuit.Eretz One Realty paints a wild picture of its tenants gaming the system while renting one of the company’s apartments in the six-story condo on 15th Avenue, according to court documents filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court.Lipa and Mindje Spielman, along with their five children — Rivka, Moshe, Chaim, Nechama and Esther — have turned a 1,300-square-foot, four-bedroom unit into a legal battleground, Eretz’s attorney, Gary Rosen, told The Post. Even though the family packed up and abandoned the apartment on March 31, court records say, they are refusing to surrender possession of the property unless they get a massive cash payout, Rosen said in an interview.“These people have been in this apartment for many years,” Rosen said.

“They moved to a new apartment and refused to give my client possession of the apartment.They’re basically trying to hold the apartment up for money to move out, except they moved out in March.”Eretz, with an office in Long Island’s Roslyn Heights, built the six-story, 36-unit building at 3715 15th Ave.

in 2009 and held on to a few units. The Spielman family moved into one of those units in July 2012 at a monthly rent of $2,100.Lipa was the tenant/voucher participant, and Mindje participated in the scheme, the lawsuit claims.In 2023, Eretz decided it wanted to sell the unit and did not renew the family’s lease.

But the Spielmans hung onto it by submitting an unauthorized lease renewal to the New York City Housing Authority, a defendant in the case, with forged Eretz signatures to keep their voucher subsidies flowing, per court documents.Mindje told The Post th...