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A Bronx landlord who’s clinging to life thanks to COVID-19 was slapped with two lawsuits over a $23,000 high-interest loan he was forced to take out during the pandemic-related rent moratorium, according to a new lawsuit.
The lending company Premier Capital Funding LLC is hunting down Jeffrey Schneider — who is on life support — to repay $58,000 for the loan he took out in May through his company Remie Realty Corp., according to court papers filed by Schneider’s wife.
Schneider, the landlord of a rent-controlled building in the Bronx, sought the $23,000 life line when his struggling tenants stopped paying rent, the court filing says.
He managed to pay back $25,000 of the roughly $35,000 total he owed on the high-interest loan before coronavirus all but killed him.
“This debt that started out with the merchant [Remie] receiving $23,000 has now exploded into an $85,000 debt,” Schneider family lawyer Ashlee Colonna Cohen told The Post. “He’s already paid $25,000 of it and they are still asking for more.”
Schneider’s wife, Cindy Schneider, said the virus has left him “on a ventilator and extracorporeal life support (ECMO machine),” according to an affidavit filed last month.
Jeffrey — who is fully vaccinated — is “fighting for [his] life,” his family said through Colonna Cohen.
The New Jersey resident fell on heard times during the pandemic as the state eviction moratorium allowed for many of his tenants to stop paying rent, leaving him without any recourse and “severely hampering [his company’s] ability to generate revenue,” the wife’s affidavit explains.
Cindy said she was unaware that her beleaguered husband “sought short term, extremely high interest, loans called ‘merchant cash advances’ to help with the shortage of funds” – including the one from Premier that he would need to repay to the tune of $35,750 under the agreement, the court paper says.
Jeffrey came down with COVID-19 in early November and landed in the hospital on Nov. 7, where he has remained since, the affidavit says. He was placed on life support in Nov. 29 — and Premier filed suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court two days later when his payments stopped.
The family offered to fork up the $11,000 of the remaining debt “in a lump sum and they still rejected it. They wanted their fees,” Colonna Cohen said.
Cindy is now asking a judge to reverse a Jan. 4 default judgment that Premier secured for $38,000 against Jeffrey since he is “incapacitated, disabled and unable to protect his interest or appear in this action” and since he was only allegedly served with court summons by email that Cindy didn’t see at the time, the affidavit says.
Cindy says she didn’t find out about the default judgment until Jan. 10 when a check she’d written to an employee from Remie Realty bounced because Premier had all of her husband’s personal and business accounts frozen to recoup the $38,000. An additional $5,000 fee is slated to be collected from the city Marshal’s office because of Premier’s levy on the accounts, the court papers allege.
Premier also brought a second suit against Remie in Manhattan Supreme Court for another $20,000 in connection to the same loan. Colonna Cohen says she plans to file papers seeking to overturn the judgement that was also filed in that case.
Colonna Cohen called the second case, which was filed two days after the one in Brooklyn, “double dipping” and accused the company of filing it in a different county “to avoid being detected as a double judgment.”
Meanwhile, Remie Realty has shut down and Cindy is “unable to pay for Jeffrey’s medical bills and attorney’s fees” — on top of the bills, utilities and payroll he owes as a landlord, the affidavit says.
“I implore the court to vacate the levy, vacate the restrains on the accounts, and direct Premier to pay restitution to defendants for all monies taken pursuant to the default judgment,” the affidavit says.
New York law doesn’t allow for default judgments against incapacitated people and Premier was supposed to inform the judge when they found out about Jeffrey’s condition, Colonna Cohen wrote in court papers.
“Instead of ceasing collection activity, and advising the court of [Jeffrey’s] incapacitation {Premier] immediately had the New York City Marshal levy default judgment amount,” Colonna Cohen said in her filing.
“They are fully aware that Jeff is in this condition,” the lawyer told The Post.
A lawyer for Premier didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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