NYC Landlord Tagged With Lawsuit Alleging Discrimination Against Prospective Tenant With Section 8 Housing Voucher

In New York City, the Fair Housing Justice Center recently issued the following announcement of a lawsuit it filed alleging fair housing violations against a Brooklyn landlord:

• On October 21, 2014, the Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC)(1) and Barbara S., an African American woman with a Section 8 Housing Voucher, filed a state court lawsuit in Manhattan alleging that the owners and managers of apartment buildings in New York City discriminate against Section 8 Voucher holders in violation of the New York City Human Rights Law. The lawsuit names Carnegie Management, Ditmas Park LLC, and Ditmas Park Two LLC as defendants. Since 2008, the New York City Human Rights Law has prohibited discrimination in housing based on source of income, including rental subsidies.(2)
  
  In 2012, Barbara S. complained to the FHJC that Carnegie Management refused to rent to her because she has a rental subsidy. In response to her complaint, the FHJC conducted an undercover testing investigation involving two Carnegie properties in Brooklyn, a 65-unit apartment building located at 585-599 East 21st Street and a 48-unit apartment building located 2211 Ditmas Avenue.
  
  The testing investigation confirmed that agents for the defendants informed renters with Section 8 housing vouchers that they would not be accepted while encouraging renters without rental subsidies to apply for available apartments owned and managed by the defendants.

Source: Landlord Rejects Tenants with Rental Assistance (FHJC Lawsuit Alleges Source Of Income Discrimination).

(1) The Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. (FHJC) is a regional fair housing organization based in New York City. The FHJC provides a full-service fair housing program to New York City and the seven surrounding New York counties of Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester.

(2) For more on 'source of income' discrimination in New York City, see No License to Discriminate (Real Estate Advertising, Source of Income Discrimination, and Homelessness in New York City).

Feds Invoke 'Forfeiture' Move In Effort To Boot Innocent Wife, Kids From $1.9M Boca Mansion Co-Owned With Convicted Insider-Trading, Hedge Fund Hubby While Latter Preps For Nine Year Stay In Can

In New York City, the New York Post reports:

• The wife of former SAC Capital moneyman Mathew Martoma doesn’t think she should have to give up her luxurious lifestyle just because her husband orchestrated the most lucrative insider trading scheme in history.
  
  Rosemary Martoma is trying to block the feds from seizing her share of the couple’s assets, including their $1.9 million Boca Raton, Fla., mansion where they moved after he was fired in 2010, and $4 million in bank accounts.
  
  Mathew Martoma was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to fork over $9.3 million — his take of the $275 million profit his employer, hedge fund SAC Capital, reaped from his illegal trading.
  
  Rosemary, a former pediatrician, asked the court on Wednesday to set a hearing over her assertion that she should be able keep half of the properties.(1)
  
  She “agreed to give up her career, and care for the household and children, based on the promise that she would have equal, joint ownership of all income derived from the defendant’s work outside of the household,” her lawyers said in court papers.
  
  The same lawyers also represent Mathew Martoma and have been paid for by Steve Cohen, SAC Capital’s founder. Prosecutors tried to get Martoma to implicate Cohen without success.
  
  White-collar defense lawyers debunked her argument. “If one spouse steals money, the other spouse doesn’t get to keep it just because she quit work,” said Michael Bowe of Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman.
  
  Separately, the government on Tuesday opposed Mathew Martoma’s request to stay out of prison on appeal instead of surrendering Nov. 10. The government considers him a flight risk.

Source: Rosemary Martoma wants her half of husband’s ill-gotten gains.

(1) Go here for Rosemary Martoma's petition asking to keep half of her husband's assets form forfeiture.

Crackpot Gets Seven Years For Targeting Chicago U.S. Attorney, Other Feds With Billion$ In Bogus Retaliatory Liens Filed Against Their Property; Judge Declares All Illegally Filed Paperwork Null & Void

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Fairview Heights, Illinois):

• After nearly two years, the federal prosecution of Cherron Marie Phillips, a/k/a “River Tali,” ended yesterday with Phillips being sentenced to a seven year prison term, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced [].
  
  Phillips, a 43 year old Chicago native, was indicted back in November 2012 with knowingly filing false maritime liens against the property of a dozen current and former federal employees, including former United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, in retaliation for their involvement in the investigation and prosecution of her brother, Devon Phillips. A jury in Chicago convicted her on 10 of 12 counts in June of this year.
  
  During the trial, the government presented evidence that from 2006 to 2011, Phillips’s brother, Devon Phillips, had been investigated and prosecuted in the Northern District of Illinois for trafficking cocaine. Cherron Phillips regularly attended his court proceedings and filed documents in the record objecting to the jurisdiction of the court. She filed the liens – each in the amount of $100 billion – in the spring of 2011, several weeks after her brother was sentenced.(1) The existence of the liens wasn’t discovered until later that summer, when one of the victims was attempting a real estate transaction.
  
  
  ***
  
  In a written memorandum he filed before sentencing, Judge Reagan noted that Phillips subscribes to the “sovereign citizen” ideology – a belief that the government is operating outside its jurisdiction and that by taking certain prescribed steps, citizens can live in this country without abiding by its laws. It was these “misguided beliefs” and “tortured logic,” he wrote, that formed the basis for her crimes. During the sentencing hearing, Phillips read aloud from a prepared statement and claimed the court did not have jurisdiction over her, prompting Judge Reagan to observe that even now, “she simply doesn’t get it.”
  
  
  ***
  
  On a motion from the United States, the court also signed an order from the bench declaring the liens null and void, releasing them, and ordering that they be afforded “no legal force or effect whatsoever.” That order and a copy of the final judgment will be recorded in the public record in Cook County, Illinois, where the liens were originally filed.

For the U.S. Attorney press release, see Sovereign Citizen Who Retaliated Against Federal Officials By Filing False Liens Sentenced To Seven Years In Prison.

(1) See generally,

• The New York Times: In Paper War, Flood of Liens Is the Weapon,
• National Association of Secretaries of State: State Strategies to Subvert Fraudulent Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Filings (A Report for State Business Filing Agencies).

No 'Sovereign' Immunity For 'Paper Terrorist', Gets Five Years For Taking Revenge Against Over Two Dozen South Jersey Judicial, Police, Municipal Officials By Filing Bogus Retaliatory Liens Against Their Property

In Camden, New Jersey, the South Jersey Times reports:

• A Wisconsin man who is part of the "Sovereign Citizen" movement and pleaded guilty to threatening nearly 30 judicial, police and municipal officials around South Jersey will lose that sovereignty when he enters prison, authorities announced Wednesday.
  
  Michael G. Rinderele, 30, of Waukesha, Wisc., was sentenced Oct. 15 to five years in prison by Superior Court Judge Samuel D. Natal in a plea deal on charges of threats and other improper influence in official and political matters and four counts of retaliation against a public official or past public officials.
  
  Rinderle admitted to financially threatening a Voorhees Township Municipal Court judge via email in connection with traffic tickets issued to Rinderle's common-law wife, Joann Ellis, according to prosecutors.
  
  Prosecutors say Rinderle went on to file fraudulent commercial liens against the judge and 27 other public officials in Voorhees and Winslow Township, including court staff of police personnel.
  
  Rinderle was also ordered to pay more than $600 in fines and to have no contact with his victims or their families.
  
  Prosecutors say members of the Sovereign Citizen movement — who claim to be outside the realm of statutory law — commonly use bureaucratic processes to engage in "paper terrorism" as a form of harassment.(1)

Source: 'Sovereign Citizen' to serve 5-year prison term for threats to South Jersey officials.

(1) See generally,

• The New York Times: In Paper War, Flood of Liens Is the Weapon,
• National Association of Secretaries of State: State Strategies to Subvert Fraudulent Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Filings (A Report for State Business Filing Agencies).