The wife of a developer wrote a $56,000 personal check in an effort to stop foreclosure proceedings on a proposed synagogue site for a rabbi with strong ties to real-estate moguls.
Yishayahu Yosef Pinto has been raising money to open a synagogue on the ground floor at the Heritage at Trump Place condominium overlooking the Hudson River.
In 2008, Ilan Bracha, one of the city's top-selling residential brokers, and his partner developer Haim Binstock paid $1.65 million for the 2,700-square-foot space. Mr. Bracha said they plan to donate it for the rabbi's use.
Construction on that synagogue hasn't begun. The condo board last year obtained a judgment against Messrs. Bracha and Binstock in New York civil court for what it says amounted to $55,753 in unpaid common charges, interest and other fees, according to the condo board and court records. At the end of last year, the board started foreclosing on the property.
The board said it received on Monday a personal check from Mr. Binstock's wife. The check followed The Wall Street Journal's inquiries into the property's foreclosure.
Mr. Bracha said common charges were withheld related to a dispute between the board and the owners over access to the building. "We regret any misunderstanding with the board," Mr. Bracha said, adding that the debt was being paid.
Ben Suky, an associate of the rabbi, referred calls for comment to Judith King, a spokeswoman for Rabbi Pinto's Shuva Israel organization. Ms. King's office said she wasn't available for comment.
Condo board representatives couldn't be reached for comment on Tuesday. Prior to the payment, the board said in a statement it was "unanimous in its resolve to prosecute this matter to the fullest extent and will pursue every available remedy."
Rabbi Pinto hails from a long line of rabbis who trace their lineage back to pre-Inquisition Spain. He has established synagogues and schools around the world, including Russia and Argentina.
Aside from his charitable work and religious teachings, he is best known for his consultations with real-estate developers.
When Haim Revah, a real-estate magnate who once owned the Lipstick Building where Bernard Madoff was a tenant, brooded about purchasing the Bank One tower in Dallas two years ago, the rabbi suggested a maximum bid that proved to be the winning price: $216 million. "I don't know how the rabbi did it, but at the end of the day, it was the best price possible," Mr. Revah says.
The rabbi also tells his followers when to pass on a deal. Real-estate investor Ofer Yardeni was considering opportunities in Europe, but the rabbi wouldn't let him, telling the Israeli-born investor his home was now New York. "To knock down a wall, you pound on the same place. If you do it all over, you'll never knock it down," Mr. Yardeni recalls the rabbi telling him.
Mr. Bracha, also from Israel, met Rabbi Pinto shortly after moving to New York and struck up a close relationship. "He's like a mentor and a father to me," Mr. Bracha told the Journal in a 2008 interview. "He has a red phone to God."
With Prudential Douglas Elliman, Mr. Bracha became one of the top brokers at the city's biggest residential brokerage firm. Last month, he left the firm to open a Manhattan office for Keller-Williams, the Texas-based real-estate franchise company.
While at Dougals Elliman, Mr. Bracha also launched a property development company, B + B Investment Group, with Mr. Binstock. Mr. Binstock couldn't be reached for comment.
Those two partners formed a limited-liability company that purchased the commercial space at 240 Riverside Boulevard, a 31-story condominium that is part of the Trump Organization's large redevelopment at the former railroad yards by Riverside Park.
Messrs. Bracha and Binstock planned to build a synagogue at the space to complement Rabbi Pinto's existing synagogue on the East Side. Last March, the partners held a fund-raiser for construction of the synagogue at the 15 Central Park West condominium; developers Serge Hoyda and Yair Levy were among the power players attending.
But in early in 2009, the partners defaulted by failing to pay their share of the building's common charges, according to the foreclosure action brought by the condo board in New York State Supreme Court. "There have been recurring defaults thereafter," the lawsuit by the condo board stated.
That lawsuit followed a civil case in which the condo board obtained a judgment against the commercial-space owners. Their partnership "admits it has no defense to the plaintiff's claims," court documents of the judgment show. The partners then made two consecutive monthly payments of about $1,758, but after that stopped paying again, the condo board said.
Neither Rabbi Pinto nor Messrs. Bracha and Binstock have submitted any construction plans for approval to the condo board, according to the board.
Yea yea. Ared phone to Hashem. Watch your pockets
ReplyDeleteit is very suspicious when rav pinto spends 30 million dollars on the purchase of a building when all his followers are from brookyn and the place is rarely used can someone explain
ReplyDeleteHey maybe he has a talent and he uses it to get money for his organization ,we heard already from a lot of rabbis that are real smart and business minded
ReplyDeleteIs he the "Rabbi" that met with lebron james over the summer for cash in the six digits?
ReplyDeleteDoes he also have a red phone To god to help the poor and the sick or only the rich and famous?
ReplyDeleteI agree. Foreclosures need a huge amount of work.92 percent of consumers expressed that if they bought a foreclosure, they would be willing to make home improvements after they closed the deal, with 65 percent being willing to invest 20 percent or less of the purchase price. Although stories of foreclosures missing plumbing and every electrical fixture are very memorable, many foreclosed homes need only the (relatively inexpensive) cosmetics that many new homeowners want to customize no matter what kind of home they’re buying: paint, carpet,and many others.
ReplyDeletestopping foreclosure ocala
Hey Joe,
ReplyDeleteObviously you have "Rabbi Problem", you could have written about thousands of years of great and saintly leaders of the Jewish people, instead you seek to debase them-shame on you and your family--fix it fast, for hell is very hot.