More Shady Shenanigans in Brooklyn Courts

Audit reveals shady shenanigans in Brooklyn courts
The New York Daily News by Barbara Ross - July 6, 2009

Brooklyn's scandal-plagued court system gets a new black eye in a scathing audit that found the borough's public administrator's office riddled with "mismanagement and laziness." The city controller's office uncovered shoddy recordkeeping, suspicious real estate deals and auctions run by a shadowy company that vanished when auditors started asking questions. "From the time my auditors began this audit, there seemed to be one startling revelation after another with regard to the lack of detail paid to the process of distributing and accounting for the estates of the deceased," Controller William Thompson said. Surrogate judges in each borough appoint a public administrator to oversee the estates of people who die without wills. Thompson's auditors found a "culture of mismanagement and laziness" in Brooklyn's public administrator office. Things were such a mess that Thompson urged all Brooklyn residents to "make out a will as soon as possible" - avoiding the risk of being bilked by the office. Sloppy record keeping made it impossible for auditors to get basic information about how many cases the office handled, who took hundreds of missing files, where checks went or how vendors were hired and paid. The audit also unearthed questionable deals handled by Premiere Asset Real Estate - a company that disappeared as soon as auditors pressed for answers on "irregular" transactions.  In September 2007, Premiere employees clipped the ends of bags of jewelry that had been inventoried, then dumped the contents into one pile, auditors found. The jewels were sold without being photographed, and auditors found no record of which estate the gems had come from. The audit also cited a December 2007 auction by Premiere of nine properties for $5.9 million.

Auditors found no closing documents or records of who bought a house at 112 Marine Walk in Saltaire on Fire Island - or how much the buyer paid for the property that an online real estate service valued at about $800,000. Another sale of a house at 1284 Ocean Parkway also "appeared irregular," auditors found. Gabriel Zetouni bought the house with a winning bid of $1.5million. He paid it off at the January 2008 closing with help from a $1.3 million check - written from the account of Coney Island developer Joseph Sitt. Zetouni then turned around and resold the property to Harold Forspan for an extra $44,313, according to the audit. Sitt could not be reached for comment on why he bankrolled Zetouni. Forspan said he is part of a limited partnership that made the second-highest bid. Zetouni "changed his mind" and flipped the property for what he had paid, plus the transfer tax, Forspan said. Brooklyn's public administrator, Bruce Stein, said the problems cited in the audit took place before he took over last summer. Stein replaced Gerard Cabrera, who left office along with a deputy, Natasha Godby. Stein said he is trying to adopt most of the auditors' recommendations.  bross@nydailynews.com