Wednesday, September 19, 2018

City files lawsuit against illegal hotel operators


From Curbed:

New York City is continuing its crackdown on illegal hotel operators and has announced a new lawsuit against three illegal hotel operators in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens that are accused of using multiple host accounts with false identities to advertise at least 15 apartments in in seven different buildings. This is the first suit to be filed against illegal operators in multiple boroughs.

Defendants Alexandra Pavlenok, Ekaterina Plotnikova, and Stepan Solovyev were identified by the city’s Office of Special Enforcement as illegal hotel operators and in the suit, the city alleges that defendants misled guests about the legality of the listings by using addresses and deceptive explanations. They reportedly operated out of seven buildings in three boroughs and generated nearly $1 million from roughly 5,000 visitors. The seven buildings identified in the lawsuit are 12 John Street, 40 Water Street, 151 Stanton Street, 153 Stanton Street, 159 Bleecker Street, 238 Gates Avenue, 17-12 Menahan Street.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The city DOB needs a separate unit dedicated to deal with this kind of illegal activity.

Anonymous said...

How about them cracking down on these "two family homes" that REALLY house 4 or 5 families in it? If you see 4 different mailboxes and 4 different water meters on the side of a house, you can surely bet that 4 families live in that house! It's not rocket science!

Anonymous said...

i thought this was a sanctuary city?

TommyR said...

Good...

Anonymous said...

The only hotels allowed are the ones that can be used as homeless shelters. The little people making money isn't allowed.

JQ LLC said...

What I find interesting is that the story doesn't say what platform they used to rent these rooms illegally

Anonymous said...

"what platform they used"
Not AIRbnb (whose always getting blamed)
Those slumlord comrades running those hotels use Citi Data forum, I know because 2 friends of mine lost apartments in the Gates ave building. These creepy Russian and Albanian looking creeps were, knocking on the doors, stalking and threatening them to take back the security and some extra cash and move out. The claim was: "building dangerous need it fix before you have bad accident"

It works like this, you ask about a nice place, nice neighborhoods to live, your needs and the slumlords running the hotels make you an offer in private

http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york-city/

keep in mind the moderators of www.city-data.com are almost ALL real estate agents, slumlords, rats, snakes and weasels out to make $$$$

M. How said...

It seems that these "creepy Russian and Albanian looking creeps" are not very smart. They neglected to find out the going price for the City to ignore their "hotel" status. Or, alternatively, they refused the jacked-up bribes. No other reasons.