Queens, NY - City's King Of Debt

Far Rockaway, Queens, NY - Despite Finance Department's statement saying that he owes $9.75 million in property taxes, interest, water bills, emergency repairs and other charges, for a Brooklyn apartment house, 265 Hawthorne St., owner Yaakov Goldfeder claims he never got a single tax bill from the city.

It's owned by Yaakov Goldfeder of Far Rockaway, Queens, the city's No. 1 property tax deadbeat, according to the Finance Department. Goldfeder and others who managed 265 Hawthorne have failed to pay taxes and other city bills for 17 straight years - while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in rent.

The building also has a sordid history of hundreds of housing code violations, including vermin infestation, lead paint, broken doors, mold, leaks and fire code infractions.
The financial history of 265 Hawthorne is filled with charges and countercharges of fraud and misplaced trust, according to Goldfeder and another man who holds a mortgage on the building. "Believe me, I am the victim here, I haven't made a penny from this building, I lost a lot of money," said Goldfeder, a diminutive man in his late 50s.
"I've never gotten a single tax bill from the city," he claimed.
"We've continued to send out notices of account," countered Owen Stone, spokesman for the Finance Department.

Goldfeder actually operates out of a small office at 145 Seabreeze Ave., Brighton Beach. "I don't even own my own home; someone could sue me," he said.
Goldfeder said he pays property taxes on eight other buildings he owns and acknowledges "tremendous" debt on 265 Hawthorne St.

Because the city only recently began foreclosure proceedings against the building, "I'm happy for them to take it over," Goldfeder said. In any event, no investor would buy the property as is because the $9.75 million debt far outstrips its market value of $1.7 million, according to city assessors and real estate lawyers.
Goldfeder said he hasn't been in the building in 20 years and that a management company collects rent. "I don't know the name of the management company, I think it's run by a guy named Polner, maybe I spoke to him once."

Goldfeder charged that both he and the city have been defrauded on the property by Sid Borenstein, a Brooklyn certified public accountant who loaned him an $800,000 mortgage in 1989. "I was using the money to make repairs, I was paying taxes, but after a couple of years, I couldn't make the mortgage payments," said Goldfeder. And for more than 10 years he assumed that Borenstein owned the building and had filed the deed with the city until he learned that, as landlord, he was being sued by a tenant.