Talk Bronx New York

Facing a court judgment, Monique Sykes said a process server falsely claimed that he had notified her of a court action against her.

The first notice that a debt judgment had been entered against her came in July, said Monique Sykes. Big red letters were splashed across the top: “Marshal’s Notice of Execution.”

“I was in a panic,” recalled Ms. Sykes, 29, of the Bronx. “For like 5 or 10 minutes all my eyes could focus on were those words, ‘Marshal’s Notice,’ and ‘lien on property.’ ”

Ms. Sykes is among thousands of New Yorkers who, according to a class-action lawsuit, are victims of a network of debt collectors who used fraudulent documents to surreptitiously win court judgments — all without the debtors’ knowledge.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan this week, takes aim at a decades-old practice known in legal circles as “sewer service.” This is when a debt collector fails to serve a notice of complaint and then files a false affidavit claiming the notice has been properly served. When the debtor doesn’t show up in court, the collector can then apply for, and almost always wins, a default judgment. Read more..

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ALBANY — Pedro Espada Jr. who is expected to become the majority leader of the State Senate in January, owes more than $60,000 in fines to New York City’s Campaign Finance Board, dating to his 2001 run for Bronx borough president. He has appealed the fines in state court.

In addition, state elections officials in Albany say that Mr. Espada did not register his campaign for Senate this year; and he could face more than $6,000 in fines. It is not the first time he has run afoul of the State Board of Elections: His 2000 Senate campaign was fined for failing to submit finance reports.

In 2005, three employees of a Bronx nonprofit health care company run by Mr. Espada, the Soundview HealthCare Network, pleaded guilty to diverting $30,000 from programs for family care and AIDS treatment to one of his campaigns. Mr. Espada was never charged.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Espada said he had made mistakes in some cases and had been unfairly accused in others. The scrutiny, he added, is part of politics. Read more..

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The Democratic Party organization in the Bronx has been rocked by internal warring so intense that it has been operating in the last week with two headquarters and two leaders claiming to be the legitimate head of the party. And, for a time, neither side quite knew how to resolve the impasse. That is likely to change before long.

The group led by Assemblyman José Rivera, who has chaired the party for the last six years, filed papers in the state Supreme Court in the Bronx this morning to ask that Mr. Rivera be affirmed as the chairman of the Bronx Democratic organization.

The Rivera group is seeking to get the court to invalidate any claim by a faction of rebel elected officials to have their leaders recognized as the officers of the party. The two factions held back-to-back meetings on Sept. 28 with the rebel group electing Assemblyman Carl E. Heastie as the chairman of the party.

Jerry H. Goldfeder, the lawyer for the group led by Mr. Rivera, said that he and “and the current leadership of the Bronx County organization believe they won fair and square and that they were elected under proper procedure.”

Mr. Goldfeder added that there was a 10-day period after the party meeting under the election law to bring the matter before the court. “If it’s necessary for the court to resolve the dispute as to who won,” he said, “we had to begin a court case no later than Oct. 8.” Read more..

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