Topic 0
List of Felonies, Misdemeanors, Violations, Harassments, etc., by the Nezajs and their Agents since 2009
Dr. Gregory L. Scott
The following summarizes chronologically to at least 2025 some of the major illicit actions & activities of the Nezajs and their helpers (e.g., tenants at 83 PTW). Minor ones, like turning off a tenant’s lights, shutting off the water without notice, locking the tenant from the outside using a problematic lock in place for 55+ years, etc., are ignored for the moment.
However, this list may be augmented in the future with additional elements, which will be noted, e.g, “Added on Oct 1, 2025.” This is posted as is, in effect as a “sketch,” because for years the Nezaj clan has been able to suppress public knowledge of their misdeeds as a result of court actions, etc., but now that the first case against them in NY Supreme Court (= civil court or "NYSC") has been adjudicated (as of 6 Mar 2025), with both father (Hamdi) and son (Shpend aka Joey) provably perjuring themselves under oath, the time has come to protect all potential new victims by exposing their character and history. (Moreover, at least two other court cases are still in the pipeline with them as Defendants but could take a number of even more years to get to trial.)
The construction of this page is on-going, and the later parts are not complete. Please read or examine URLs only to “To Be Continued,” and if that phrase is not found, the document is finished (and this remark will have been deleted anyway at that point).
Background: 2009-2014 (refers also to episodes from 2016-2017, of which more below)
After having had seven non-black roommates since 1998, with no problems and never a complaint by Kosova Properties (“Kosova”), that is, by its owner-landlord Hamdi Nezaj and managing agents, e.g., son Shpend aka Joey Nezaj, Hamdi tried to force me to evict my first black roommate, a French teacher and jazz singer. I obtained a lawyer, who wrote him a letter saying that by Federal and State law I was allowed to have family and one non-family roommate no matter what the lease says.
Letter from lawyer Feldman to Hamdi (2009)
This was the beginning of Kosova treating me as persona non grata and also the beginning of the proof of the Nezaj racism, as described more below and as came to a head in 2016-2017, when the legendary producer and film-maker Norman Lear began to expose Hamdi in the already released A House Divided (2016), from 30:55-42:48:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXIClKpf7k4
That is Hamdi's voice (and face on the computer) during the initial interviews and then Hamdi himself with his face purposefully blurred as he is subsequently confronted with his illegal discrimination (because the case had not gone to trial, scheduled for around Sept 2017).
Lear is effective but only scratches the surface: a few tenants, who have been shown over the years to also have racist predispositions, have helped Hamdi, pretending he is a marvelous and law-abiding landlord and allowing him much more effectively to engage in illegal or unethical behavior. Hamdi then paid $620,000 in Federal court, Sept 2017, for a suit against him by Fair Housing Justice Center for racial discrimination:
http://www.fairhousingjustice.org/newsletters/opening-acts-september-25-2017/
Police corruption and how it relates to Kosova
In 2013, I sent a letter to the Chief of Police Bratton reporting seeming corruption in the 34th Precinct pertaining to illegal triple parking from about 9:00-18:00 Mondays to Saturdays on Broadway between 215th and 216th Streets that caused dangerous driving conditions. After a 4-month cessation of the triple parking at the end of 2013, it all started again with a vengeance, and of the date of this first posting to TrueJusticeSociety.org in May 2025 was still ongoing.
Starting in 2015, whenever I would report, usually with evidence, an apparent crime or violation by Kosova, the 34th would sweep it under the covers. For this and their other apparent corruption, especially insofar as they protect the Nezajs, see Topic 2—Corruption at the 34th Precinct and NYPD in general, including the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB):
Five Photos of Illegal Triple Parking since 2012 (of a total of about 70 over the years, taken, for instance, as I walked to the subway): 2012, 2017, 2018, 2024, and 2025
Complaint in 2013 (after letter sent to Chief of Police in 2013, who forwarded it to the Northern Manhattan Division, who passed it to the 34th Precinct to investigate itself, with my name and address now known to them as the “whistleblower”).
2015
Feb-March
Kosova turned off buzzers for about 10 days (and during the trial in Jan 2025, Joey claimed, contrary to the two tenants who suffered through it, that “Maybe it was three, four days,” p. 81, l. 7), another perjury if Noyes and I are correct, given the emails. When I warned Joey in March 2015 that I would start a tenants’ union if they turned off the buzzers again, he issued a death threat against me: “Lucky (his brother) and two others will come over and you will be gone - we can get into your apartment at any time.”
The latter part was certainly true because by law they had all keys to my apartment. I called police, who would do nothing, whether or not they connected me to the allegation of corruption two years before (I have a Verizon record of the call and it is recounted in two places from 2015 and 2016, in a Harassment filing in Housing Court ("HC"). Joey’s not-so-subtle death threat greatly scared by wife, and we had to buy an internal door-stopper which was problematic because we had a legal adult roommate who worked late and often returned hours after we went to bed.
Call to Police to report Death Threat (Verizon record-2015-3-4);
Harassment form for action in HC, 2016-3-11, reporting “death threat” (see especially p. 7)
By pure coincidence, the (white) art historian roommate of my wife and myself, moved out after 2.5 years to get married and we replaced her with a wonderful French from Paris for five months, L. Monnet, in NYC for an internship. She happened to be black, which seems to have led to Kosova denying us a third key, of which more shortly.
Notice of new black French roommate, Front and Back
June
A single mother, Jane Yan in #2F, had installed about $18,000 of soundproofing in her apartment so her teenage son, an aspiring composer, would not disturb others. She and her sound engineer got verbal permission from Hamdi to install it, but made the mistake of not having the agreement in writing, especially because, around 1999, she had won a court case against Kosova, forcing them to allow her to keep a new puppy her young child had grown attached to, which they had had for six months before Kosova insisted she removed the dog. After the job in 2015 was almost complete, as she recounted after the fact, Hamdi & Joey told her she had to remove it or they would throw her furniture onto the sidewalk. She left her rent-stabilized unit in fear around June 2015, two months before the Tenants’ Association was formed and wrote subsequently a letter to the NY AG about Kosova, but by then she had forfeited her rights (because this type of landlord harassment is not something the NY AG would investigate).
Ms. Yan’s Letter to the NY Attorney General (p. 1)
July
On Sunday the 26th, after a post a mere couple of days before on a summer weekend, Kosova changed the outside door locks with special non-duplicable keys, and illegally did not give the proper number of keys to at least four leaseholders: 3A (mine), 3E (Dr. James Noyes), 6F (Jocelyn Goldstein Ali) and Ground (Caitlyn Napolitano), withholding them for many months in some cases, 13 months for Noyes, and in my case almost 2 years before DHCR denied Kosova’s appeal and threatened Hamdi with a $2000 fine if he did not provide it. As a result some tenants returning home could not get into the building and had to ring neighbors or wait for someone to let them into the building (because the tenant in #1A, waiting on the front stoop, requested this of me a day or two after as I returned home).
Exhibits proving the withholding of keys: Audio of 2015-7-26; DHCR ruling.
My wife recorded Joey praising me on 26 July and claiming “…you’re a great tenant, we like you, you pay your rent on time,… you don’t give us any issues,” helping prove that he committed at least one 1st-Degree Class D felony perjury during his Trial Testimony in Jan 2025, when he falsely painted me, in effect, as the neighbor-tenant from hell for 20 years—see the details in Topic 1, with the pages of the Trial Testimony specified (under “Joey’s Third Perjury”). This recording also proves Joey committed another perjury when he claimed in the trial that there was nobody he had to provide a key for at this time (p. 85 of Trial Testimony).
On the 27th, as also detailed further with the evidence in Topic 1, I wrote a Certified Letter Return Receipt to Hamdi, insisting on the 3rd building key for the new legal adult roommate, C. Lachina of my wife and myself. (The aforementioned black roommate, a wonderful student from France, had just left without Kosova being notified of her departure, so to their knowledge she was still living with us.) This letter confirms at least the perjury noted above, and also helps show that Kosova never investigated Joey’s death threat, which, inexplicably (of which more in Topic 7), my lawyer R. Basil in 2025 never introduced in trial to undercut Joey’s claims that Kosova was in effect the perfect landlord.
On the 29th, while I was working for IBM in my home office, my buzzer went off without stop. I assumed it was the lobby buzzer but after I returned from racing down to the the lobby, where a tenant there said that no one had left or entered the building for the previous minute or so, I discovered Joey, who was now living two floors lower (in #1D) standing by my door, on the 3rd floor. He said he heard the buzzer from the floor above and unstuck it (it had been, he said, wedged under its metal holder). Yet, as caught at the beginning of the audio/video from 26 July above, he had fabricated at the beginning of the key exchange on that day the buzzer not working properly (when it has always worked properly since 1998), puzzling me so much I ignored it at that point. I realized on 29 July that he was planning to show me that the landlord would be the one responsible if it got stuck, thereby warning me that I would be subject to continual harassment if I stayed in the building. I called the police but they would do nothing because I did not actually see him wedge the buzzer.
Recording of the buzzer sticking 2015-7-29
August
As a result of being deprived of needed, and legally owed, building keys, Caitlyn Napolitano and I formed the Tenants’ Association that eventually became 83PeTA (83 Park Terrace West electronic Tenants’ Association): all communication was by email rather than cumbersome monthly meetings. Members distributed the Mission Newsletter and filed DHCR actions to get legal keys, mail boxes replaced (because some would not close/lock) and lights put into the stairwell, which was often pitch black at night). I also filed a personal DHCR action to have my badly fogged windows replaced because the HPD inspectors claimed they only cared by cracked or broken windows (see later in this site the differences between the two agencies). I asked if that meant the landlord could paint them black, ruining the ability to see out of them, and the HPD inspector would not reply, leading me to also file the successful complaint with DHCR. This led also to rent reduction, ongoing for 9+ years now, another reason Kosova wants me out of the building.
Order Reducing Rent (see DHCR ruling above)
As I result of the 83PeTA formation, Joey, who had moved into the building about Jan 2015, and Lazer Plumaj, the new superintendent (“super”), unsuccessfully tried almost immediately to have Napolitano arrested for allegedly putting “vaseline” on the buzzers at the alley entrance on or about 27 August. More likely, because future conduct shows a pattern, Kosova did the vaseline themselves and tried to pin the blame on the tenant. However, because Joey and Plumaj would not tell the police that they actually saw her do it, the police refused to arrest her.
DHCR letter by Hamdi (with lies about me and showing he attempted to have Napolitano arrested)
On or about 29 Aug, Joey blocked me on the stairs and would not let me walk up. I called 911 and while waiting on the sidewalk for the officers, I asked Plumaj, who was watering plants, why he had lied to me about Napolitano being evicted immediately. Joey came out, interrupted the conversation, and ordered Plumaj not to speak, and then called 911, or at least pretended to call, claiming that I was following and threatening the two of them, much younger and bigger!
I filed a police report for Joey blocking me and not allowing me to walk the stairs, but the 34th would do nothing (typically the case for 2nd degree Harassment). Actually, they supposedly lost the report, which also happened to the man in front of me at the precinct when I went to get the number, and thus I had to call out the police again to repeat the details and the travel to the opposite end of Manhattan to 1 Police Plaza to get the report. What a convenient way to make the number of infractions drop in any quarter or year for a precinct, especially for political purposes and Public Relations, because many victims of a minor crime or violation will simply not waste more time following up.
Audio of conversation with Lazer and Joey on sidewalk
Police report with number redone in Nov 2015 because “lost”
Aug 2015 continued (ongoing to July 2016)
As mentioned, actions were filed with DHCR, which punished Kosova by giving rent reduction to those who signed the relevant DHCR form rent reduction (Napolitano and myself, with another tenant not rewarded because he was the spouse and not technically the leaseholder)
DHCR ruling from 2016, which involved Kosova appealing (and losing)--again, see above link.
Sept 2015 (to Feb 2016)
On the 14th, I made a call to Hamdi, recording it (as is legal in NY) and insisting not only on the third key for Lachina and long-overdue painting but emphasizing how the new 83PeTA will legally act if he continues to deprive tenants of required services. As the recording reveals, he insists on 10% more rent for a roommate, and also states I must have his permission first for a roommate, both of which go against Real Estate code. This recording not only reveals yet again that Joey perjured himself when swearing no roommate existed in July 2015 to give a (third) key to, but also reveals at least two more perjuries on Hamdi’s depositions.
Telephone recording of 2015-9-14
In parallel, starting on the 12th, Kosova delayed for four days fixing a combination light switch/outlet in my kitchen that would sometimes spark when the switch was flipped, obviously a potentially dangerous fire hazard. After complaining each day to the super and then, on the 16th in the morning, finally warning him and also Hamdi that I would call the FDNY, I was framed by Joey and Plumaj for breaking a window in the stairwell about 7 p.m. (see Topic 1 and its Exhibits for how Joey and his father, while lying under oath, pinned all the blame on Plumaj, with my Basil inexplicably not introducing any of my hard evidence either to corroborate my side’s testimony or, especially, to impeach the sworn falsehoods of Joey). Having learned from the episode with Napolitano three weeks earlier, Joey and Plumaj told the police that they saw me break the window with a hammer in the evening, even though two people had seen it broken that morning.
In the trial in 2025, Joey denied under oath that he was ever with the police in the building and so never himself helped have me falsely arrested. As will be made clearer one day when allowed to show the full deposition (because it has certain privacy protections), that testimony was inconsistent with his deposition. Again inexplicably, my attorney Basil chose not to introduce this in the trial, only helping Kosova.
An update on 22 May 2025: my new attorney, the remarkably accomplished Kenneth McCallion, just filed an Affirmation to retry the case per CPLR 4404, given the damaging actions of Basil, who was fired for cause. That Affirmation is public and thus I report now one utterly inconsistent and crucial testimony under oath by Joey. The following Sections 9-12 are from pages 4-5, available on the NYSCEF website (FILED: NEW YORK COUNTY CLERK 05/21/2025 12:42 PM INDEX NO. 155225/2016 — NYSCEF DOC. NO. 115):
9.
However, Mr. Basil failed to question Joey as to crucial inconsistencies in his testimony and deposition, that would have revealed to the jury that Joey committed perjury under oath (and therefore a fraud on the Court), either in his deposition testimony or at trial, thereby substantially reducing his credibility. For example, at trial, Joey testified as follows:
Q. At the time you arrived were the police there?
A. I saw a cop car outside, yes.
Q. Were there any police inside the apartment building?
A. I’m not sure.
See Trial Transcript of Proceedings, January 29, 2025 at pp. 76-77, attached hereto as Exhibit A.
10.
However, in his deposition, Joey testified as follows:
Q. At some point you got to 83 Park Terrace, right?
A. Yeah.
Q. What, if anything, did you observe?
A. I observed — I got there a few minutes before the police
got there.
Q. So when you got there you saw Lazer?
A. I saw Lazer, yeah.
Q. Where was he?
A. He was waiting in front of the building I believe.
Q. So he knew to expect you?
A. Not to expect, me.
Q. Okay, he was expecting the police?
A. I guess so.
Dep. Trans.of Shpend Nezaj a/k/a Joey at p. 104; attached hereto as Exhibit B (emphasis added).
11.
At trial, Joey continued:
Q. And when you got to the building, what did you see?
A. I saw a cop car outside. I went to the basement, I saw Lazer in the basement.
Trial Transcript of Proceedings, January 29, 2025 at p. 91, Exhibit A.
12.
Despite the obvious contradiction – i.e., Joey testifying in his deposition that he arrived at the premises before the police arrived, versus testifying at trial that the police were already there when he arrived – Mr. Basil failed to bring this major inconsistency to the jury’s attention or to confront Joey with these blatant inconsistencies.
Other perjuries by Joey are provable with evidence, as shown in Topic 1. They are all presumably 1st-Degree Class D because they affected the jury deliberations (which did not hold Joey accountable), each punishable by 7 years in prison and/or $5000 fine.
After being arrested and thrown in jail on 16 Sept, I was prosecuted for almost five months before the DA dropped the charges (the police and DA would never look at evidence, with me being the Defendant and therefore opponent in court), and in 2016 I filed suit in NYSC against Joey, Plumaj, Hamdi and Kosova Properties (Index #155225/2016). As mentioned, the case finally made it to trial Jan-March 2025, a “mere” 9+ years after the arrest —again, for the fuller details, see Topic 1.
Certificate of DA dropping the charges on 2015-2-2 with the quaint phrase “People Concede”
Oct
As he was pushing me onto the street after I was processed and released from jail late on 16 Sept, Officer Moscoso let me show him the email from Noyes after my iPhone was returned to me, helping prove the window had been broken long before Joey and Plumaj claimed. He said “you should sue them [Joey and Plumaj] big time,” but he rejected my request to vacate the arrest.
Moreover, a month later, he signed the criminal complaint. Why? Did a senior officer force him, in order to rid the 34th of the whistle-blower Scott? Some evidence of this is Sgt. Marx subsequently not being willing to look at my evidence after the DA dropped the charges against me, when, by law or policy, the police could look at my evidence. This led to an arduous struggle to get the DA to look at the evidence, which led to flip-flopping on the part of their ADAs, Marissa Carro and Jeff Levinson; see Topic 3.
Original DAT and Moscoso unethically or corruptly signing the criminal complaint on 2015-10-15
Nov
Because the new 83PeTA filed a complaint with DHCR, Kosova had to replace the old mailboxes, some of which did not lock.
Photo of mailboxes in Aug 2015
That is, out of the blue, the mail quit being delivered and the mailboxes were ripped out, with no notice to tenants. 83PeTA discovered quickly the reason by calling the P.O. and posted an explanation for fellow tenants, informing them they had to go to the Inwood branch for the time being to get their mail.
About a week later, I went to get my mail and was told it was now being delivered. I returned home after shopping to find a postman squatting, along the opposite wall from new mailboxes, sorting a massive amount of mail, with Joey standing next to him. Given that some of my mail had never arrived shortly after I started 83PeTA (with Joey living six feet from the mailboxes and having keys to all the boxes), I was naturally very concerned. I took a picture of him and he started recording me.
As will be covered in the “stayed” trial in HC (see Topic 6) Joey then tries to intimidate me, along with harassing me, and lies about the incident in various ways on his deposition of 1 May 2018 (for the first false arrest of 16 Sept 2015). More will be forthcoming at the proper time on this issue, when the stayed HC case is unstayed (after the second false arrest case is decided).
Audio of the interaction (first minute is sound of phone in pocket as I arrive home, walking)
Contrary to what the postman promised, he never rang me when he was finished, and since I had no key to the new mailbox, I could not get my mail. Joey skipped my apartment that evening when handing out the new keys, keeping me from getting my mail. I only got my keys (and thus access to my mail) the next day, again, as a sign the landlord will harass me in any way possible as long as I live in the building.
Some mail continued to never reach me in the months to come, and again the landlord/Joey was the only other one with keys (I had never had a problem in the previous 17 years with mail delivery). I was advised by the P.O. to install my own lock, without giving a key to the landlord, which I did (holding onto the old lock). Writing to the PO for investigations turned out always to be a waste of time, with at best the Inwood PO being allowed to investigate itself.
Recording of Joey purposefully skipping my unit
PO investigations: Some History to Head of Inwood Branch, Letter to NYC Postmaster and Requests to USPS Investigators (Part 1 and Part 2)
Oct-Dec
Napolitano, desperately needing a second key for her partner (whom she married a few years later), Carlos Dacosta, a firefighter with FDNY, took Kosova to HC. Hamdi claimed they had no lawyer and needed another hearing; Joey then piped in, saying they had one, Eric Kahan, but he was not there that day. All of this forced Napolitano to waste another lost morning from work for the second hearing (and Judge Gonzales was surprised, saying that Kahan was there everyday).
In the second hearing, Kosova’s attorney Eric Kahan misleadingly told the judge that the key cost $200 (and then $100), when by DHCR regulation Napolitano, the leaseholder, is owed without cost two keys. The judge ruled that Kosova would give Napolitano the key once she showed identification for Dacosta, but she requested that Joey not be the one to do the exchange because he had been harassing the much smaller Dacosta. However, Joey showed up anyway and would not take Dacosta’s FDNY identification. Napolitano had to waste another morning in court for a third hearing, in which the judge savaged Kahan for taking the FDNY id and still withholding the key. (Kosova may well pay a monthly retainer and because Kahan is there always, it is trivial for Kosova to abuse tenants, who must appear in person and usually take at least a morning off from work). See Topic 7 for how seven out of seven lawyers involved in the HC and NYSC cases engaged in either legal shenanigans, if not outright fraud or unethical behavior, not counting Kahan, who counts as the first to my knowledge of Kosova using the legal system as a cudgel against tenants from 2015 onwards.
Napolitano also filed a motion in DHCR for Harassment and the hearing was held in Mar 2016. I attended it, as did Jane Yan, to offer support and show a pattern of harassment by Kosova. Very oddly, Senior Attorney Coletti would not allow patterns to be shown, insisting, e.g., that I file my own Harassment case (which I did, see below), and only allowing myself and Yan into the hearing after the testimonies of the two litigants (Kosova and Napolitano). He then refused to let Yan testify, saying her situation had nothing to do with the exact charges that Napolitano had file. This might have been true, but the policy was completely inconsistent with the policy that Senior Attorney K. Shade used later in Nov, 2016, when Scott appeared for his own hearing. She allowed not only patterns but witnesses for Kosova who had no clue about my charges or who had never even met me, and they often talked about anything and everything, essentially taking hours away from the hearing the Shade then terminated long before I could give any or all of my rejoinders!
Suspiciously, when Coletti made his ruling, he essentially permitted them to keep keys from other tenants, suggesting the cases were always ad hoc, when DCHR policy is stated after Hamdi appears the rulings that go against him: Every legal resident over 10 years of age (if not “at least 10”) must be provided with a key for free. I say “suspiciously,” not only because of the inconsistency with Shade, but because as we were leaving Napolitano’s hearing, before Coletti took a number of weeks to make his written ruling, I detected from down a long hall that Hamdi & Joey were having a tete-a-tete with Coletti, when as the mediator-judge, he should not have been meeting with only one side. When I stopped and stared at them, they quickly broke apart. Was this the landlord setting up some kind of inducement? See Topic 7. For other issues with the DHCR, including Joey’s wife somehow insinuating herself into a job there, see Topic 5.
Housing Court Official Recordings (.mp3 files):
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 10 Nov 2015 Recording
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 24 Nov 2015 Recording Part 1
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 24 Nov 2015 Recording Part 2
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 24 Nov 2015 Recording Part 3
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 11 Dec 2015 Recording
Housing Court Official Transcripts (pdf's of the Recordings):
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 10 Nov 2015 (partial, of critical points only)
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 24 Nov 2015
Napolitano_v_Nezaj_Kosova 11 Dec 2015
2016
January - March
The following months continue to show Kosova using HC as a cudgel (similarly to how they abused Napolitano).
Because Hamdi would never agree to a painting date, even though I had sent the request in writing per his demand on the call of 14 Sept 2015, I had to pay the $45 or so and file a suit at HC. On 8 Jan 2016, the hearing was held and Joey lied a number of times (but these types of initial hearings are not under oath, for some strange reason). For example, he falsely claimed I had 4-5 wives and that I had sublet my apartment in the previous summer. Part of the hearing was for the third key, but my wife and I would not be taking in a graduate student from France on an exchange program in philosophy at Columbia University for another week, and thus Judge Gonzales denied me the key, forcing again three working adults to live with two keys until DHCR denied Hamdi’s final appeal a year later. So much for judicial wisdom, and more on HC oddities in Topic 4.
This is the judge and hearing that Joey referred to when he tried to hoodwink the court and the jury in his trial about me needing a 3rd key in July/Aug 2015, pretending that the Jan date was the same as the summer 2015 date. As shown in Topic 1, Basil drove him to say that there was no one (legitimate) to give a key to, but Basil then shockingly stopped there, never pulling up either the video recording of 26 July 2015 or the letter from 27 July 2015 or the telephone recording of 14 Sept 2015, any and all of which would have revealed to the court, jury and world that Joey had just perjured himself and could no longer be trusted on any testimony.
Housing Court evidence:
Dec 2015 - List of Violations and Pictures of Apartment
Gregory Scott_v_Kosova 8 Jan 2016 Court Audio
Gregory Scott_v_Kosova 8 Jan 2016 Transcript (partial, of critical points only)
Gregory Scott_v_Kosova 8 Jan 2016 Court Settlement
The court-ordered settlement of 8 Jan was that Kosova had to paint essentially the west half of the apartment (entrance hall, dining room, kitchen, small bedroom was not listed by mistake but was painted anyway, and the bathroom). The east side, the large master bedroom and the extremely large kitchen, were not to be painted, because I had been long-scheduled for an elbow surgery in the next week and it would be impossible for me to move a large wall-unit and another bookcase away from the wall (the required 3 feet); those rooms could be done in summer, after I rehabilitated the arm and regained strength. The painters came and completed the job. Joey also showed and harassed me and insisted that they paint the living room too, which I rejected, per court order (and with my arm being in a sling, post-surgery).
2016-1-25 Joey Insisting I Move Living Room Furniture (contrary to Court Settlement)
However, they never installed the chain-guard on the front door, the final element of the court order. HPD (affiliated with the court) called a couple of days later to determine whether the work had been done and I told them the painting was but not the chain guard. Apparently, Kosova was to be punished because on 12 February, ten days after the DA dropped the criminal charges against me for allegedly breaking a window, Joey falsely swore on an Affidavit by Vadim Goldshyeyn (aka "Goldstein" for Court Recording/Transcripts) that I had not let them in to finish the court order (#5 of the statements on the Affidavit, available below). This forced me to attend a hearing on 2016-3-3, but neither Goldstein nor Kosova appeared, causing me to lose half a day’s work, etc. I immediately filed for another hearing to complain to a judge, Judge Saxe, who was the one on duty, and appeared on March 11.
Joey's perjury on Affidavit and Order to Appear for 11 Mar 2016 (Housing Court)
Goldstein and Joey finally appeared and Goldstein claimed he had miscalendared. Permission was given to me reclaim costs for losing 1/2 day but I had to do it through Small Claims Court, which naturally involved a lot more time and effort, even though I was successful. More drastically, Joey prevaricated 14+ times during his testimony before Judge Saxe to cover his perjury on the Affidavit, even drawing the layout of the apartment as if it were a cube with four equal sized squares making up the interior (again, in this type hearing Joey was not under oath, but the Affidavit indeed was under oath). Essentially, Joey argued that I had "denied him entrance," not because I refused admittance to the apartment, but because I had not removed the furniture at least three feet from the wall in the living room and because the living room was the same as the dining room. Yet the first claim was absolutely irrelevant (because the living room was not supposed to be painted, as confirmed in the previous court settlement) and the living room was a completely different room from the dining room. Implying that pictures could only be shown if printed, Judge Saxe would not allow me to open my computer to show pictures of my apartment (even though in the hearing of 8 Jan, Judge Gonzales had allowed Kosova to show a cell phone picture in which they claimed I was threatening Joey). My computer photos would have immediately proved Joey's perjury; instead, a debate went on for the hearing, with, among other things, Joey wasting all the court resources and staff time to fabricate his long story. In short, he completely lied about Statement 5 on the Affidavit, even granting his strange interpretation of what it meant.
This was the outrageous perjury and cover-up that I tried to present to ADA Taylor when I met her in early 2020 primarily because of the assault,-- the Statute of Limitations would be up in another year and the incident shows how little credibility Joey should have in any legal setting, especially in an assault case when the advertised security cameras were not working, with only him knowing that. After hearing part of my story, and seeing some of the evidence I provide here, Taylor said, in effect, "I have a hard time believing this," either suggesting no landlord would be stupid enough to concoct such a story that could be immediately disproved, with a perjury on the line, or that I had fabricated either the evidence or the explanation, or the like. See Topic 3 for more on what can only be called the rank incompetence of some, and I emphasize only "some," ADAs, because others are clearly competent, with integrity.
2015-3-11 Court Transcript (partial of critical points only)
The Transcript has been colored in blue in the parts Joey and his lawyer egregiously misrepresent the facts. Judge Saxe forced a settlement with no punishment of Joey (or even acknowledgement that he might have been profusely falsifying): It required Kosova to come three days later, on 14 March between 9:00 and 12:00 noon, to install the chain guard. They did not come and I had to file to return to court on 31 March to resolve the issue. At that point, Joey lied again about them coming, and at that point, being fed up with his falsehoods, I demanded trial. Judge Saxe was angry at me because I kept insisting on the term "perjury" and tried to force me into the trial in about a week, which would have been almost impossible: How does one new to HC find an appropriate lawyer who then has time to prepare in such a short time? Fortunately for me, their lawyer was booked for a couple of weeks and I had to attend an IBM conference in Spain for work, and thus I was given six weeks to find a lawyer and prepare.
2015-3-31 Court Transcript (partial of critical points only)
After the trial was set, my lawyer Ivy Alexander, who had been recommended by a friend, considered her own interests more than mine, saying about a week before trial that she had a conflict, even though she had taken the case knowing the trial date. Without me knowing the ramifications, I agreed to a postponement, only to discover that for the next trial date Kosova requested a postponement. She warned me a day or two in advance that because we had been granted one, they would almost certainly be granted one (which indeed was the case). What I discovered is that for each postponement, I was losing witnesses who had to change work schedules, etc., and who no longer had faith in our trial calendar. Readers are warned about this in the event they ever wish to rely on witnesses (or on Alexander).
On the third trial date, on or about 26 July 2016, the judge was unavailable because of heart surgery, and I discontinued without prejudice (meaning I could restart the case) because the DHCR had just ruled for me on 6 July on some of the same issues and they punished Kosova by ordering rent reduction for me, which I am still on, for reasons provided below. I then moved the few remaining charges, like the death threat, to the suit my new attorney, Ed Sivin, had recently filed in NYSC in April 2016, Subject 1 in this website.
Another caution to readers: Sivin mentioned that malicious actions after a tort (the false arrest when Kosova framed me for allegedly breaking a window) can lead to greater punitive damages, which is one reason I "added" the harassments and threat in HC to the NYSC #155225/2016. However, is the case progressed and I kept providing Sivin's office with more and more evidence of newer harassments, they seemed to get annoyed, saying at one point they wanted to keep it simple for the jury. This surprised me because I assumed that Sivin would want the larger payout if the post-tort malicious actions were shown with hard evidence (he was on pure contingency and the larger the damages, the more he is recompensed). Basil, the lawyer who took over from Sivin after the pandemic devastated Sivin's office then told me he had never heard of this principle, of malicious actions after a tort, and he eventually informed me that the actions should have been moved to a different suit for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. To this day, I am not sure who is correct and will eventually modify this paragraph once I get a definitive and clear answer from a reliable source. More on all of this when discussing the 28 charges of Harassment in Topic 4.
January - June (in parallel)
On 27 June 2016, the aforementioned Jocelyn Goldstein (Ali) , who had married the gracious and elegant black man, who moved into her apartment with his shy 15-year daughter from a previous marriage, wrote an email to me, wanting to join the tenants' association because of harassment by Hamdi and Joey Nezaj and the super Plumaj going on for months. She had made the mistake of bringing a black spouse into the building. As the assets at the two links show, Plumaj asks her via text, having keys by law to her apartment, "Can. I fuck ur asss Baby," and then pretends to be sorry, calling her at the end "sister." She was certainly not his sister and he had a new wife, brought in from Albania/Kosovo, who could barely speak a few words of English, with no sister. However, "sister" is what many black women call each other... Goldstein Ali called the police, who swept it all under the rug, again protecting the landlord and saying it was just a mistake.
The obscene text message from Kosova to a female tenant
March (in parallel)
Napolitano had a hearing at DHCR with a mediator, Senior Attorney John Coletti, to charge Hamdi and Joey Nezaj with Harassment...
**// TO BE CONTINUED
**// DHCR rulings in July 2016
By this point in mid-2016, the Nezaj clan and their agents had, among the other actions shown above:
tried to force Scott to evict his legitimate black roommate;
turned off buzzers for over a week, seemingly as an excuse to enter apartments and check if partitions were up or if tenants were renting to, e.g., AirBnB guests or the like;
threatened to kill Scott when he complained;
threatened Yan so fearfully she gave up a rent-stabilized apartment after having just installed $18,000 of sound proofing;
changed the building lock to one with non-duplicable keys and illegally deprived at least four tenants of needed keys, shortly after discovering that Mr. & Mrs. Scott had a new black roommate;
tried to have Napolitano arrested for allegedly putting a vaseline-type substance on buzzers, immediately after she started helping form a tenants' association;
successfully had Scott arrested by pretending he broke a window in front of Joey and Plumaj in the evening;
used Housing Court lawyers as a cudgel to gravely inconvenience Napolitano as she sued to get her second building key;
lied repeatedly to judges in Housing Court hearings and, with respect to Joey, committed perjury on an Affidavit of 12 Feb 2016;
sent a horrifically obscene text message to a tenant for whom they had keys to her apartment and could enter anytime.
On the good side, DHCR punished Kosova, awarding rent reduction to both Napolitano and Scott, and the latter was awarded $300 in Small Claims Court in Dec 2016 for the stunt that Kosova's lawyer pulled in Housing Court earlier the year, involving him "miscalendaring" the date so Scott wasted a morning going to the assigned hearing.
The following continues the modern NYC saga...