By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-27 22:25:49 | Updated at 2025-03-31 00:27:00
3 days ago
A real estate agent facing dozens of rape accusations duped a building owner into renting a pricey pad to a deadbeat who never paid a dime, a new lawsuit claims.
Tal Alexander — one of the notorious lux real-estate Alexander Brothers — allegedly coaxed the owner of a flashy Soho property to lease his swanky, $45,00-a-month penthouse to a buddy who used “falsified bank documents,” according to the lawsuit.
The owners of a $12 million Thompson Street duplex filed the lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday against Alexander, broker Nicholas Lounsbury and tenant Daniel Fine — but the alleged bad tenant fired back against the claims and called the huge space “unlivable.”
The lease “was and continues to be a con-job disaster,” claims the lawsuit, which accuses Fine, an entrepreneur, of never paying his rent, and instead illegally subletting the unit “to generate income for themselves without paying Plaintiff its justly-due rent.”
Fine also allegedly failed to pay his “remarkable” electric bills which “regularly” exceeded $2,500 per month, the suit states.
Fine, through his company, FineCo, allegedly produced a “fraudulent” bank statement showing FineCo held over $4 million in cash, court papers state.
Tal and brother Oren, both former high-rolling luxury real estate agents who were hired to help lease out the penthouse at 54 Thompson St., are now in federal lockup awaiting trial on charges they raped at least 60 women.
“The brazenness of Mr. Fine’s forgery of his company’s financial records is appalling to our client,” said Christopher Milito, attorney for the owners. “Worse still is that Official Partners – our client’s own broker – appears to be complicit in this fraud. Forthcoming subpoenas will show FineCo’s true financial situation at the time – which we expect will be dismal.”
But the tenant told The Post that the penthouse was riddled with issues — including “no AC at all, and no heat in the winter,” he said, calling the new lawsuit “fraudulent.”
“I have been trying to reach an agreement once we discovered that the unit was being misrepresented,” Fine said in a phone interview, adding that he has kept the owed rent in a segregated account.
When Fine was last at the unit on Jan. 22, the thermostat read 48 degrees, he said.
Over the summer, the unit often recorded temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, court documents show.
“Can’t deal and so utterly unfair,” Fine wrote last summer in an extensive text message chain filed in an earlier lawsuit, which documents a lengthy back and forth between Fine and the property managers about the broken AC, and a myriad of other issues, in the 7,500-square-foot penthouse palace.
“This is costing me in every facet of my life,” he wrote, “and the worst part is that it’s completely within the control of the owners/building owners.”
Prior to moving in, Fine sent a lengthy punch-list to the owners of 54 Thompson, court records reveal.
“They were supposed to fix certain things prior to moving in,” Fine said of the list, which includes issues like a collapsing ceiling, a broken dishwasher, peeling paint and wallpaper, holes in the wall, broken electrical outlets and cracked countertops.
Fine, in a court filing, claims he had intended to reside in the pricey pad, but he has “faced persistent, severe, and ongoing habitability issues that have made the unit unlivable and unfit for occupancy,” only living there “on an intermittent basis” since the least began in June.
“Do the owners realize the insanity of what we’re dealing with?” he wrote in another text.
Fine estimated that only 10% of the original punch-list has been addressed.
“This, now third, lawsuit is nothing more than an amateur litigation stunt,” said Fine’s attorney, Maya Petrocelli. “Given the conditions of the apartment, FineCo withheld rent, as it is entitled to do.”
Fine sent The Post an email from a JP Morgan Private Bank analyst allegedly confirming his $4.3 million account balance from when the lease was signed.
Milito declined to elaborate how his clients came to believe Fine’s bank statement was phoney and was unwilling to comment on the prior lawsuits and counterclaims.
The owners, Hugh Nygen and Tri Nyguen — CEO of Miami-based Network Capital — purchased the prime spot in 2021 for $12.3 million with the Alexander brothers acting as their brokers, property records show.
Court documents show the building is also being sued by the city for owing nearly $230,000 in water charges.
Lounsbury declined to comment when reached by The Post. Lawyers representing Alexander in other proceedings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
