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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When two guards were accused last month of encouraging inmates in one Rikers Island jail to police themselves, leading to beatings and in one case the killing of an inmate, correction officials called the situation “an aberration” and said they had not seen such a case in other units involving other guards.

But New York City has been sued in recent years by more than a half-dozen Rikers inmates claiming to have been the victims of beatings by prisoners while guards looked the other way, or worse, ordered the attacks. The city settled one case for $500,000, and another for just under $100,000. A new lawsuit was filed Tuesday.

And last year, Bronx prosecutors charged that a Rikers guard ordered six inmates to beat two prisoners; one victim was hospitalized with a collapsed lung. The guard has pleaded not guilty. Read more..

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Bronx Ex-Officer Is Sent to Prison

A former city police officer who helped his brother distribute vast quantities of cocaine and marijuana throughout the New York area from 2002 to 2005 was sentenced in Federal District Court to 10 years in prison yesterday.

The former officer, Jose Torrado, 32, of the Bronx, pleaded guilty earlier this year to drug trafficking charges. Mr. Torrado joined the Police Department in 2001 and resigned in 2006 amid an investigation into his crimes. While serving with the department, Mr. Torrado worked with a criminal group that smuggled drugs from Mexico to New York in trucks, prosecutors have said.

SOURCE: NY Times

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