Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Brooklyn’s ‘Worst Landlord’ Jailed For $450K Bribery And Threats

Herman Epstein, a notorious Brooklyn slumlord, was sentenced to up to six years in prison after being found guilty of bribing city officials to avoid making necessary repairs — and threatening tenants to force them to move.

He even told one tenant he would spread rumors about her engaging in incest if she didn’t get out of her apartment.

“Move out or I will start a rumor that you slept with your daughter,” he threatened one tenant in recorded call, according to court papers. “I am gonna screw you.”

Epstein, prosecutors demonstrated, paid out more than $500,000 in bribes to building inspectors so they would ignore violations of the city’s safe housing code in their check-ins.

Epstein left cash in paper bags for housing inspectors to ignore violations and plied them with gifts like a Nissan SUV and a Royal Caribbean Cruise.

He also tried to illegally evict tenants at some of his 100 properties spread throughout the city.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.