After forty-five years of hard work, we have been stripped of our business, our home and our life’s savings by a villainous fraudulent debtor, in collusion with corrupt legal practitioners and confounded with frivolous judicial process. Furthermore, by means of a fraudulent bankruptcy and four years of a convoluted bankruptcy stay, we were forced to pay for the mortgage, taxes and insurance while the  debtor enjoyed  free  and  exclusive occupancy  of our property.  It took four years of intense litigation before we successfully evicted them. By this time, they had so vandalized our property that we were completely depleted of everything we had worked a lifetime to achieve.

In the absence of consequences, Jack Lefkowitz, Rabbi Steinwurtzel and his board of directors and congregation defied court orders for payment under a contract; under court ordered Use & Occupancy; and for Adequate Protection. (As provided for by law!) Also during this time, this debtor in occupancy illegally “leased” our property to others for compensation. They utilized their superior financial resources to pervert the course of justice and to resist all legal attempts to legally remove them from our property. They prevented us from selling our own property during the peak real estate market of 2004-2007. On the eve of eviction when their illegal occupancy of our property was coming to an end, they placed a notice in a prominent Hebrew magazine 2007-05-16 2007-05-16 Hamodia stating, not to purchase our property…a hostile act and completely illegal. However, Judge Bernstein chose to overlook this and all other illegalities and hostilities perpetrated by this debtor. Why?

A CRIMINAL EPOCH OF FRAUD, HATE AND CORRUPTION

Property damage, demolition and vandalism of a disgustingly biased nature that the debtor and his congregation had inflicted upon our property was conspicuous and telling. There can be no doubt that this constituted a criminal act and was conceived in hate! The trustee and other officers of the court witnessed the extent of the damages: vandalism, destruction and graffiti of a grossly biased nature, written in Hebrew, with blue paint sprayed on doors, walls, windows and fittings. The strings of our beautiful Grand piano had been violently ripped out and left hanging as a further statement of the debtor’s disdain for us. Also during the enforced bankruptcy stay, fixtures and fittings were removed from the property without trustee authorization. The trustee made no effort to secure the property nor to restrain the debtor from their plundering of the property. When presented with this evidence, the court completely evaded the issue and rendered no comment. We can only conclude that the implicit evidence of a hate crime was more than the court could handle. Due to this conspicuous fraud and blatant injustice, The Meadows was lost in a subsequent foreclosure, along with our life’s savings and our award winning business and residential home, The Griffin House.

Standing alone against a Religious Corporation and its congregation is not without its many challenges. Behind closed doors, during depositions and even in open court Southern District of New York, within easy hearing of their victims, religious zealotry and bigotry boiled to the surface. They demonstrated that they have unlimited funds for litigation, (funded through Maskil Al Dal, LLC registered corporation in New York and Jerusalem, Israel.) and for convolution of the judicial process, but purportedly, none to pay their debts. Conceived In Hate and through a strategy of Fraudulent Contracts, “Hot Potato” Assignments, “Friday Night” Document Dumps, Malicious and False Allegations, Frustratingly Frivolous Actions and countless Contrived Adjournments, this consortium of self righteous conspirators managed to mesmerize the court for ten years!