Mitchell Kossoff, 68, defrauded 35 of his clients, using their cash to pay off massive credit card bills and $19,000 monthly rent on his luxury apartment. At times, Kossoff used clients’ stolen money to pay back other clients he’d stolen from, prosecutors said.
Embattled real estate lawyer Kossoff battles trustee over records reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Illustration by Paul Dilakian/Getty)
The spin class at the New York Sports Club near City Hall was a popular lunchtime workout for landlords and real estate attorneys.
They would go for the intense instructor, Mitch Kossoff, a spinning evangelist and one of New York City’s most prominent landlord lawyers.
Mitch Kossoff
In the studio, Kossoff cranked up a soundtrack of thumping club music, motivating his class to “dance on the bike” as they worked up a sweat. In his law practice, too, Kossoff made adversaries perspire with an encyclopedic knowledge of the state’s byzantine rent stabilization and loft laws.
This has to be the worst Mother’s Day present ever.
Real estate attorney Mitchell Kossoff allegedly forged his 94-year-old mother’s signature to take out more than $2 million in loans before he went AWOL earlier this month.
Kossoff, who went radio-silent in early April when clients began asking about their escrow accounts, took out $2.6 million in August and January in merchant cash advances essentially a kind of corporate payday loan where a firm sells its future revenues in exchange for up-front cash. Kossoff agreed to pay back $3.7 million, according to a lawsuit filed two weeks ago by the financing firm.