Friday, February 20, 2015

COMING SOON TO A BLOG NEAR YOU — The Judge John Phillips – John Kennedy O’Hara Story to be Told Anew

[ WATCH THIS SPACE FOR DETAILS OF A FUTURE MULTI-PART SERIES ]

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SETTLEMENT OF JUDGE PHILLIPS WRONGFUL DEATH CASE FOR $750,000 IS NOT  THE WHOLE STORY  —   NOR IS IT THE END OF THE STORY  —   See WHO WAS CLOSE TO Judge John Phillips  —   And see who was OUT TO GET HIM   —   AND WHY


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IF THIS IS WHAT THEY DID TO A RETIRED JUDGE  —  WHAT CAN THEY DO TO YOU ? 

 

> First, they arrested him and took his gun < 

 

>> Then, they took his money and properties <<


                                                                 >>>  Finally, they took his life <<<

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READ ABOUT JOHN KENNEDY OHARA  —   ONCE JUDGE PHILLIPS’ YOUTHFUL WARD  —  AND [ SINCE O'HARA'S RE-ADMISSION TO THE PRACTICE OF LAW ]  SUCCESSFUL ATTORNEY FOR THE PHILLIPS’ ESTATE IN A RECENTLY CONCLUDED WRONGFUL DEATH ACTION 


• SEE WHAT WAS  —  O’Hara’s tie-in to Primary campaigns against DA Hynes  —   By a Republican in 1993  —  By Judge Phillips in 1997 and after  —   And by Sandra Roper in 2001 and after

• SEE WHAT WAS  —  Ohara’s role in helping John Phillips the whole time that Judge Phillips was in what now is clearly an unlawful imprisonment, including secure lock-down in an unlawful senior care facility.  —  All the while, O’Hara was himself subject to court supervision and disbarred, all because he was improperly convicted of voting violations by Hynes and those allied with Hynes.

• SEE WHAT WAS  —  O’Hara’s case for WRONGFUL DEATH ON BEHALF OF JUDGE PHILLIPS’ ESTATE  —  AND WHAT THAT CASE WAS ALL ABOUT  —  AGAINST AN UNLAWFUL SENIOR CARE FACILITY, RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO U.S. SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER'S HOME
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SEE HOW THE ASSOCIATION OF JOHN PHILLIPS AND JOHN O’HARA WAS SOMETHING THAT BEGAN YEARS BEFORE ANY OF THE COURT CASES THAT MADE FOR SUCH BIG POLITICAL AND COURTHOUSE NEWS ABOUT BOTH OF THEM


Phillips and O’Hara came from opposite sides of 1970s and 80s Brooklyn.  

• BUT SEE HOW many, many years ago, Brooklyn Civil Court Judge John Phillips helped a young man from Brooklyn get into Law School. The young man, who was finishing up his undergraduate work at the Brooklyn Campus of LIU was a part-time cab driver and Democratic Party political activist from Bay Ridge, John Kennedy O’Hara.

• SEE HOW  —  In 1993, a Democrat gadfly, perennial candidate and lawyer John O’Hara was the largest financial backer of a well known Independent Republican-Conservative candidate, who succeeded in knocking incumbent DA Charles  “Joe” Hynes off of the Republican line during Hynes’ run for re-election as DA in 1993. —  All of it in spite of Hynes’ backing by Republican Mayoral Candidate Rudy Giuliani, the GOP County Chairman, who was himself defeated partly because of his support for Hynes, and the leadership of the GOP County Organization, whose leadership was largely turned over in 1993 after backing Hynes. See that after Hynes’ stumbled in the GOP primary of 1993,  O’Hara’s legal woes for an alleged "pattern of wrongful voting" began; and learn what that case was really all about, and how the O'Hara prosecution almost fell apart completely....

• FAST FORWARD TO APRIL 1997  —    SEE HOW:  When word had gotten out that John Kennedy O’Hara was planning with retired Civil Court Judge John Phillips for a primary run against DA Charles Hynes, two men, who did not identify themselves, accosted retired Judge John L. Phillips Jr. outside what he was using as his campaign office.  SEE HOW: After a tussle, where one of the men claimed to be injured by Phillips’ Kung Fu maneuvers, one of the men grabbed Judge Phillips’ registered fire arm. SEE HOW: The two men belatedly identified themselves as plainclothes police officers and ARRESTED the retired judge.

• SEE HOW: A deputy Police Commissioner later said the two men had been officers of a special undercover investigative unit, and that they said, “...‘Stop. We're the police. Let us have your gun’...”  And  that “...[t]hey were in plainclothes but their shields were clearly displayed....” She also said  Phillips was later charged with carrying and displaying a pistol without a permit and with resisting arrest, but only after the two plainclothes officers determined that Judge Phillips’ license for his gun had expired.  SEE HOW: The charges were completely dismissed and expunged, but that Judge Phillips’ gun was never returned.

IN 2001 THEY TOOK PHILLIPS’ PROPERTIES AND PUT PHILLIPS UNDER LOCK-DOWN IN A SERIES OF MEDICAID MILLS

• SEE HOW  —  When Ohara and Phillips were getting ready for a run against Hynes in 2001, the roof fell in on retired Judge John Phillips led by a top Hynes honcho, Harvey L. Greenberg, who took charge of all of John Phillips’ money and properties, and shipped Phillips to a nursing home in the Bronx under lock-down; and that very quickly and without much explanation, he was replaced by Frank J. Livoti, also a former top ADA for Hynes, who worked long and hard to keep Phillips incommunicado, but who himself spilled a lot on tape. All of it happened under the noses of Brooklyn’s top Supreme Court Justice Michael Pesce, and key law clerks, referees, monitors, "court appointed evaluators" and other court personnel in the Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
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LETS KEEP THIS PART A LITTLE INCOGNITO AND BETWEEN OURSELVES, OK...  But you will find out that...

The circle of several of these O’hara-Phillips-Ohara cases was recently made complete in a Brooklyn Supreme Court matter still open in that saga. In fact, that closed circle establishes another close connection between former Brooklyn Administrative Justice Michael Pesce [ now Presiding Justice in the Appellate Term] and the original criminal case for “illegal voting” brought by Hynes against John Kennedy O’Hara so very long ago.
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AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT 

  YOU'LL GET TO BE IN THE KNOW that with Justice Pesce overseeing, let's make that "overlooking," everything as series of guardians were put in charge of Judge  Phillips and his money and property  —  starting with Hynes guys, Harvey L.Greenberg, briefly, and then quickly, Frank J. Livoti  —  followed by a pair of  supposedly “arms-length operators.” named Ray Jones and Emani P. Taylor —   millions of dollars of Judge Phillips' assets just plain disappeared.

 SEE HOW  —   In September 2007, John Kennedy O’Hara, then a disbarred lawyer and the longtime friend of Judge Phillips’s, filed a complaint with the I.R.S. accusing four former court-appointed guardians — Harvey L. Greenberg, Frank J. Livoti, Ray Jones and Emani P. Taylor  —   as well as a State Supreme Court Justice, one Michael L. Pesce, of violating tax law while they jointly and/or severally oversaw the John Phillips guardianship case.

 SEE HOW —   In November 2007, it was reported that a guardian appointed after the case was removed from Justice Pesce – James Cahill Jr. –  said in Supreme Court documents in Brooklyn that a string of guardians sold off or mismanaged Mr. Phillips’s property in the years that followed the establishment of the guardianship in 2001, and that thousands of dollars that had been placed in escrow simply disappeared, according to Guardian Cahill’s  papers.  —   According to the New York Times,  “Mr. Cahill said the previous guardians took hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves without going through the courts, while others made big cash payments to mystery contractors. Most never filed proper or timely accountings of what was spent out of Mr. Phillips’s account, the papers say. And for six years none of the guardians, all of whom are lawyers, paid taxes on behalf of Mr. Phillips’s estate, according to the reports Mr. Cahill filed with the court....”

Millions of dollars in taxes were owed, and there was very little left in Judge Phillips' Estate when most of the people lost interest or just "got lost" in the shuffle.

Most, but not all !  —  Not O'Hara and not some of old Judge Phillips' other older friends, and some in his family....
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YES, I'M SURE IT WILL BE A THOUSAND LAUGHS  —   BUT THERE WILL BE A SOMBER AND SERIOUS SIDE TOO

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gail, you missed a few things in your “Coming Attractions” or “Coming Soon” list of things on the O’Hara-Phillips cases. I think this material by a writer named Chris Ketcham is very important -

“Judge Phillips’s epic troubles began when Assistant District Attorney Steven Kramer, who worked for DA Joe Hynes, sought to have a guardian appointed for Phillips, claiming concern about the safety of the old man’s considerable assets. Phillips was 77 years old at the time and had no family, and Hynes sought to “help” him, according to letters his office has written to The Brooklyn Paper and elsewhere. A question exists, however, that Hynes may have had another concern — after all, Phillips had tried to unseat the DA in 1997 and was gearing up for another run.

“In New York State, anyone can file a motion to declare a person incompetent. The alleged “incapacitated person” essentially becomes an accused person: He must defend himself before a judge. In February 2001, Phillips was declared “mentally incompetent” by Judge Leonard Scholnick, who has since retired. His sizable estate, worth an estimated $10 million, was initially handed over by Scholnick to a court-appointed guardian named Harvey Greenberg, Hynes’s former chief of staff.

“Assistant DA Kramer claimed in court papers that Phillips needed protection because he had been the victim of a real-estate swindle. But in a July 2004 court appearance, Hynes’s office told the court that the investigation into the alleged scam had yielded no arrests and would be closed. The irony is that Hynes’s “help” — in the form of a round-robin of guardians lining up at the trough of Phillips’s estate — opened the doors to the kind of swindling against which the court-appointed lawyers were supposed to protect.

“Things sped downhill for Phillips once the DA stepped in. In 2002, the electricity and heat in his Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone were shut off — the bills went unpaid by the guardians — leaving the old man to shiver through two winters. Phillips had never missed filing his taxes, but since the 2001 takeover of his estate by the court, not a single tax return has been submitted by his “guardians.” In November 2004, the brownstone where Phillips lived caught fire. Now the building is a shell; the guardians had failed to pay fire insurance.

“Since 2001, there has been no official accounting of the assets in his estate, despite requests by Phillips’s pro-bono lawyer. Where are the rent rolls from his 16 buildings — a revenue of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? Where are the sale proceeds from the buildings themselves?
...

“Since 2005, Phillips’s supporters have filed complaints about the handling of the case with the Commission on Judicial Conduct, the Office of Court Administration, and to chief judge Judith Kaye. To date, there has been no response.

“Why haven’t these agencies investigated or intervened?

“When [Chris Ketcham] I last interviewed Phillips in person, in February 2006, [He had been] forced to sneak into the Bronx nursing home to avoid Pesce’s court-ordered lockdown.... It [was] outrageous, almost unbelievable, that a respected judge had come to this. “If it can happen to him [...] it can happen to anyone.”

That’s all from an article by Chris Ketcham that appeared in the May 12, 2007 edition of the Brooklyn Paper under Brooklyn News and with the title “At long last, please set Judge Phillips free.”
Maybe you were going to do it anyway, but please make sure that Ketcham’s information is in one of the later stories in your multipart series.

Anonymous said...

All roads lead to Judge Michael Pesce.

Anonymous said...

WHere did all of Judge's Philips money go? Was anybody charged with anything? How can all this be true?

Anonymous said...

if all roads lead to pesce than maybe he'll know

Anonymous said...

the disturbing controversy surrounding the phillips story is why and how nobody was held accountable. ten million dollars just vanishes?

Anonymous said...

To many crooks for one story.

Anonymous said...

Brian Williams is interviewing Phillips tonight.

Anonymous said...

All roads lead back to Harvey Greenberg and Joe Hynes in this matter. Harvey Greenberg made his initial millions by getting kickbacks from the selling off of Judge Phillips property. I know of at least one building on Nostrand Avenue and other buildings that were sold by an attorney named Ray Jones which helped to line Harvey's pockets. Some of that money went to fund Hynes' campaigns. I am not sure which campaign as he ran for many offices throughout the years. I know this because Harvey's wife and former Confidential Assistant District Attorney to Joe Hynes Mary Hughes claimed that this was the reason she married Harvey - because he had a lot of money. And one evening after attending a wake while drinking proseco she told us about the property. I had never heard of proseco before that night. Mary didn't marry Harvey because of the way he earned his money via Judge Phillips property - just that he had money was enough. In November of 2012 on a Sunday afternoon everyone from Mary's fiefdom - the Crime prevention Bureau - had to attend the wake of ADA Tracy Manley's mother (Rest in Peace). I think it was at Clavins but I am not sure as I go to many. Although Tracy is not a bigwig at the office (I think she is still employed by Thompson) her family was well connected to the Hynes' and thus she held a high position figuratively in the office on the 19th floor. Hence, the wake attendance was expected. Hynes' even had the office pay for Manley's annulment in 2012. I thought that was nice gesture as annulments in the Brooklyn Diocese can be very expensive. After the wake we went to a very nice place on Third Avenue and Mary told those of us present - the in crowd - how Harvey made his money. He also bought her beautiful Harry Winston earrings which she said Harvey paid for with the money he earned from doing side work for Joe Hynes. Those earrings were worth over six thousand dollars. I know this because she lost one in the church at the Manley funeral the next day - Monday - three ADA's were sent in an office car to the church to spend the day looking for the earring. It was done on office time but that was okay because ADA's would do anything to get out of the office. Also, does anyone know how Judge Phillips house caught on fire? I am not sure when it happened but it was a house he lived in in Brooklyn that was set ablaze. They joked about this in the office of the DA. But maybe that isn't true and his house never went on fire because who really would ever joke about something like that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone from the office was involved.

Galewyn Massey said...

NOTICE: THE "IT'S A GOOD THING" EDITION

ALL I CAN SAY IS -- IT'S A GOOD THING THAT THERE ARE CAUSES OF ACTION FOR CONTRIBUTION AND INDEMNITY....

Anonymous said...

When Judge Pesce announced that Phillips would be returning to his home at 155 Herkimer Street, the house burned to the ground the night before Phillips was scheduled to return.
Hynes was the Fire Commissioner under Koch so I wouldnt bother to check the reports.

For the details of this tragic event google "Erasing the Kung Fu Judge by Christopher Ketcham" published in the Brooklyn Rail.

Anonymous said...

Corrution in the Brooklyn Courts is a sad but old news.

The new Judge in charge, the Hon Matthew D'emic, is a straight shooter.

Anonymous said...

AH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !

Boy will YOU be surprised, unless you mean a completely different Judge MAtt Demic,

The Mathew Demic I'm thinking about is connected to the Brooklyn Conservatives Party and he is six ways to Sunday connected to the Judge Phillips and John O'Hara cases.

Gail, to think we were all back together as regular Democrats in 1980. Make sure you don't miss Demic parts of the Phillips and O'Hara stories -- if necessary we'll send you all the stuff you'll need to say about our old friend Matt.

Anonymous said...

Judge Matthew D'Emic made campaign contributions to Hynes' 2013 campaign. The D'Emics - Matt, Jr., John, Andrea all gave handsomely to Joe. I am not sure if that raises any conflicts or violates any laws but the appearance of impropriety should give us pause. Joe Hynes helped John D'Emic (Matthew's brother) avoid a felony conviction and the loss of his law license in a mortgage fraud scam which took place in that foreign county of Queens back in 2007-2008. A well-placed phone call to Queens Blvd and that felony indictment was gone. Joe also hired Matthew's son as an ADA. These gestures on the part of Hynes were very nice so it is understandable that Judge D'Emic would want to donate money to the campaign. And Joe was always happy when the Orthodox Sex Abuse cases came before Judge D'Emic. (We can thank Barry "I'm the new David Garth" Kamins for making that happen.) The anti-abuse community complained and questioned that D'Emic always sided with the defendants but Joe didn't mind. Also, do you know that Saint Patrick's School (I mean Academy) in Bay Ridge raised lots of money (well, lots by Catholic school standards) to donate to Joe's campaign. Not the parish - the school. Someone pointed that out to me. That was very civic minded of the principal there to do that.

Anonymous said...

What a cast of pious characters.

John D'Emic robs half the old ladies in Bay Ridge.

Hynes covers it up.

Judge Matt D'Emic presides over his brother John D'Emics misdeeds.

As a reward Matt D'Emics son gets hired by Hynes.

Anonymous said...

QUESTION: John D'Emic was indicted ten years ago by the Queens DA for robbing an old lady house. What happened?

Anonymous said...

its a bold faced lie that john demic robbed old ladies in bay ridge. he also robbed old ladies in queens.

Anonymous said...

The Second Department did suspend Jack D'Emic for two years for the misdemeanor conviction. But the fact that Hynes was able to keep it to a misdemeanor and not a felony which would have meant automatic disbarment still stands. And yes John/Jack did have to do community service. But unlike John O'Hara who was forced to clean the streets for hundreds of hours in the bitter cold and rain all for voting up the block and across the street instead of down the block and around the corner, Jack D'Emic you see comes from a fine and prosperous Bay Ridge family and he went to good Catholic schools and tithed I am sure weekly and probably filled his OLA mite boxes to ransom pagan infants as a kid so for that reason alone disregarding his theft of thousands of dollars from elderly women John/Jack only had to drive Sister Teresa Collins from OLPH to the doctor on a weekly basis as his community service. That was very nice. I wonder who facilitated that form of community service for D'Emic - Driving Sister Tess. Also, who do you think has more family members on the payroll in the Brooklyn courts - The Quirks? or the D'Emics?

Anonymous said...

How come the IRS never went after Harvey Greenberg and the other guardians for non-payment of taxes when they sold off the Judge's property? They must have made hundreds of thousands that way. At the very least Harvey should have to re-pay the IRS.

Anonymous said...

How much $$$$ directly went to the "Guardians" of Judge Phillips's properties and other assets. Ans what guardianship fees were approved by the courts?

Anonymous said...

As stated in an earlier comment, all roads lead to Judge Michael Pesce.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Dee Woodburn file a complaint with the Judicial Ethics Comm. regarding Pesce's handling of the funds? Wonder what ever became of that.

Anonymous said...

Justice Michael Pesce was promoted to be in charge of the Appellate Term for the 2nd, 11th & 13th Judicial Districts, so what do you think became of Dee Woodburn's complaint and all the other complaints to Chief Judge Kaye. Back then the "Keeper of the Lids" was Administrative Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman -- when he worked for Chief Judge Kaye [though some say she worked for him]. Now, it's Gail Prudenti working as Administrative Chief Judge for Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman [Lippman retained all of his duties as "Keeper of the Lids" though].

Galewyn Massey said...

WAY BACKFILL: THE “BCAT - LIBERTARIAN, JOHN O’HARA” EDITION

ONE OF O’HARA’S MANY HATS — BCAT GUEST FOR A LIBERTARIAN HOST

THIS CAME THROUGH MY WINDOW WRAPPED AROUND A BRICK AT 1:18 AM THIS MORNING — IT’S A VERY LATE BREAKING STORY, FROM ABOUT THREE-AND-A-HALF YEARS (3 ½ yrs) AGO

MY HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED — BUT SOME THINGS ARE THE SAME — LIKE ALL THE NAMES THAT O’HARA NAMES — I GUESS THAT’S WHY THEY SAY, “THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME..."


A VINTAGE YOUTUBE VIDEO LINK — of John O'Hara, convicted felon and then recently reinstated Brooklyn attorney, talking with Jim Lesczynksi of the Manhattan Libertarian Party. O’Hara chats casually, but with factual detail, about three egregious cases of corruption in the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles "Joe" Hynes--John O'Hara's own case, Judge Phillips, and John Giuca. Taped August 10, 2011 (See ““Hardfire CORRUPTION IN THE DA'S OFFICE / JOHN O'HARA / JIM LESCZYNSKI” by Gary Popkin, Uploaded 8/20/11, BCAT/ Hardfire [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlibQsWM-RQ]).

See JKO talk for a half hour straight — all about his own run-ins with Hynes; Judge John Phillips’ run-ins with Hynes, culminating in a long-time “Guardianship” during which time retired Judge Phillips was kept under lock-down, and all Phillips’ properties were seized; and lastly the legal matters surrounding Judge Phillips’ being kept in a false “Assisted Living Facility,” owned by wealthy real estate types, supposedly pursuant to a Court Order, resulting in the “Wrongful Death” of Judge John Phillips.

Anonymous said...

John D'Emic was counsel to Senator Golden

Anonymous said...

Everybody is "connected" to this scandal.

In 1980 didn't Matt Demic and John Kennedy O'Hara run together as Democrats from the McCarthy Club at the Bay Ridge Manor, O'Hara for the School Board and Demic for Assembly?

Anonymous said...

What is it with all this interest in ohara?

He ran for office over and over losing by big margins. the word on him was this guy couldnt get himself arrested till he got himself arrested.

Anonymous said...

Really? O'Hara and D'emic? These Bay Ridge boys club relationships are just so rich. Next someone will be saying Galewyn Massey drinks pints at the Kettle Black with Joe Hynes. More believable than the O'Hara D'emic dribble.

Anonymous said...

Odd that you should mention that... but aren't their trysts at The Wicked Monk?

Galewyn Massey said...

RESPONSE: GALEWYN MASSEY DOESN'T HAVE TRYSTS WITH HYNES OR ANYBODY ELSE -- AND HE DOESN'T DRINK OR LIFT "PINTS" OF ANY SORT

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NOW --- THE "JOHN KENNEDY O'HARA" EDITION

"What is it with all this interest in ohara?"

--- ARE YOU KIDDING ME ? ---

There are many friends of Galewyn Massey's "...Fountainhead" here, there and around....

Some of them are independent Democrats....

JKO is a longtime political activist in Brooklyn -- he is also an independent Democrat. He knows people who know people, especially in the NYC, NYS and specialized press, national magazines, and now even the widely followed blogs. Sometimes, O'Hara has been known to pass along information to and from some of the people that he knows.

SO "YOU TELL ME "What is it with all this interest in [O'hara]?

Anonymous said...

The selective and vindictive prosecution of John O'Hara by Joe Hynes could very well have happened to anyone who reads this blog and has or had at one time an interest or passion for public service in Brooklyn. Anyone who dared to have the audacity to challenge Hynes and his cronies was most likely subject to the same fate - having one's life upended and in most cases destroyed. The egregious retribution by Hynes toward John O'Hara is perhaps one of the most horrendous examples of how prosecutorial power was abused for years in Brooklyn. At least with the wrongful imprisonment cases it could be rationalized as "Joe Hynes didn't know, he entrusted his underlings to do this work." John O'Hara's wrongful prosecution on the other hand was directly orchestrated by Hynes. It was a vendetta Joe had against John for "challenging" Hynes and the Brooklyn political machine. After Hynes stole from John his livelihood, Hynes for years laughed about it. And in the office they joked about it. There is something inherently evil in a response like that. To John O'Hara's credit he never gave up. For twenty years he has fought through the courts for vindication. And through it all he has remained a man of principle and honor. I do not think John O'Hara has ever said a negative word about any human being - even Hynes. During the time he was disbarred, he continued to help others in need in Brooklyn - and that is the measure of a man. So to those of you who are readers of this blog who sit back and mock, and laugh, and ridicule the O'Hara fate - remember it could have been you. Joe Hynes would have just as fast destroyed your lives too - had you ever had the courage to challenge him.


- Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Anonymous said...

In 2000 ADA Steve Kramer said that John Phillips was the victim of fraud going back to 1998 (interestingly this pattern was supposedly discovered when Phillips used one of his properties for collateral in his 1997 gun charge — think long and hard about that).

In part because of ADA Kramer’s testimony, Judge Phillips and his property was put into a guardianship in 2001 which turned about fifteen million dollars ($15,000,000) in property into nothing but a huge tax debt..

Even though lots of people in and outside the criminal justice and court system said that Phillips was the victim of all kinds of frauds, one and only one person was ever prosecuted, Maria Leyna Albertina. She was a health are worker and mother, who was charged in 2005 for defrauding a number of people out of property, including old Judge Phillips, who owned a parking lot that she supposedly sold for $175,000 (please keep that number in mind).

Ms. Albertina was one of DA Hynes’ most important defendants ever while he was the Brooklyn prosecutor, but today nobody cares about her.

During Hynes’ 2005 closely fought re-election campaign against John Sampson and others, the prosecution of Maria Leyna Albertina was used as the justification for the the very controversial guardianship of Judge John Phillips. She was convinced to plead guilty to two counts of grand larceny, according to the district attorney’s office; and the length of time that she spent in jail depended on her ability to pay $2 million in restitution. It turns out that she couldn't pay anything near that and was sentenced to quite a bit of time.

That two million dollar ($2,000,000) shows that Phillips $175,000 parking lot was only a small part of what Ms. Albertina had been charged with taking. How Ms. Albertina actually “stole” the property from Judge Phillips has never been adequately explained. Only that somehow Ms. Albertina got her hands on a wrongly filed “document in the chain of title” and that somebody named “Leroy Ramsay” impersonated somebody else from one of Judge Phillips’ corporations, and a company associated with Ms Albertina wound up with a $175,000 check. You see no evidence of this “crime” ever was produced, much less introduced at a trial.

Interestingly, the person that brought the Albertina this very important case to Hynes as a complaining witness against Albertina bilked Phillips out of many times the $175,000 purportedly taken by Albertina for the parking lot property. That witness was Emani Taylor, one of the Phillips court-appointed guardians. No doubt as a payback for her being there for Hynes on the Albertina case for his 2005 election, when the issue of Emani Taylor’s defalcations came up, Hynes found that there were no crimes that he could charge against Emani Taylor. Also very interesting is that the fraudulent acts attributed to Albertina occurred after others had been put in charge of overseeing Phillips and his properties.

But you might say “Albertina pleaded guilty; and that is that.”

Maybe, you’d plead guilty too if your own lawyer's words described you as “a land flipper specializing in properties near foreclosure.... It's like being a loan shark....” Or, maybe you’d plead guilty too if you were being represented and being advised by former ADA and one of Hynes’ top insiders, Arthur Aidala.

Your see in this case that was very, very important to Hynes’ re-election in 2005, nothing could be left to chance. Of course, that was best accomplished by a guilty plea by Maria Leyna Albertina.

Anonymous said...

I was in the court system for many years, most of it in brooklyn. The phillips story was tragic and everyone knew it.

Anonymous said...

Be very careful what you say about Artie Aidala and his client Maria Albertina, and the properties in the Phillips case.

Mr. Aidala said that Mrs. Albertina’s real estate transactions were legitimate. She pleaded guilty to two counts of the multiple charges brought against her. Are you sure that she pleaded guilty on the charges involving the Phillips property? If not, your attempt to connect Arthur L. Aidala to what DA Hynes might have done on the Phillips cases falls apart completely.

Plus Emani Taylor, the main witness against Maria Leyna Albertina said lots of people tried to swindle Judge Phillips, including the court-appointed guardians before she was appointed to be Judge Phillips's guardian.

Anonymous said...

All roads lead to Pesce

Galewyn Massey said...

MODERATOR’S MESSAGE: THE “PUT THINGS WHERE THEY BELONG” EDITION

THE FOLLOWING COMMENT WAS MOVED FROM ITS PRIOR LOCATION AT THE “MARCH 1, 2015 AT 6:53 AM SLOT” ON THE COMMENTS THREAD TO THE 2/27/15 POST, “DE–CRIMINALIZING MARTY GOLDEN ! — OR WHAT COULD STATE SENATOR MARTIN GOLDEN HAVE BEEN THINKING ?”

Anonymous said...
It is amazing how many Brooklyn judges, prosecutors, attorneys, guardians and politicians benefited financially from Judge Phillips' property and estate. And they all pretended to care so much for his welfare. Did anyone ever visit him after Hynes had him confined? I wonder too where the Black civil rights leaders in Brooklyn were when this was going on - Roy Innis, Vann, Owens, et al. Did they ever speak out? I wonder. Speaking of Joe Hynes, I direct your readership to the sad saga of Arthur Mondello and the Cherry factory in Brooklyn that has made the papers of late. No doubt Mondello was a crook but his suicide makes it sad. The claim is that Hynes could never prosecute him for the drugs because the office could never get a search warrant. This is odd because ADA Mike Morelli* - his office was down the aisle from Steve Kramer - was known to be able to get a search warrant signed by that judge for just about anything. And the office didn't always have to pay for it. It became Mike's only job up there in Rackets/Money Laundering.

Mondello was called in by Vecchione and company once- but they worked things out. Joe Hynes' very good pal priest friend from the old St. Pats's, St Brendan's days celebrated Mondello's funeral Mass. I wonder if Joe went. That would have been nice. Mondello can't talk now because he is gone to his eternal rest. Did Hynes go to Judge Phillips' funeral also? I wonder.

*Mike is the son of the Joe Hynes' legendary buddy and premiere Detective Investigator Angelo Morelli. His office on 16 was ground zero for all detective work.

March 1, 2015 at 6:53 AM

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