Brooklyn resident Pamela Brown lost her own $53,000 security deposit to a real estate attorney who pleaded guilty to stealing from clients, but getting anyone to trade with the lost money has proven nearly impossible.
Brown hired attorney Daphna Zekaria in 2017 to handle a rent dispute with her Park Slope landlord, placing more than $53,000 in Zekaria’s escrow account, New York Focus. reported. Years later, Zekaria pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $400,000 from other customers and was suspended, but Brown has yet to get her money back.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in Manhattan has largely ignored her repeated complaints, Brown said, even as prosecutors in Suffolk County confirmed that the money had disappeared from Zekaria’s accounts in 2020.
The lack of action has blocked other avenues for refunds. The state-run Lawyer’s Fund for Client Protection, which compensates victims of lawyer theft, dismissed Brown’s claim this year, in part because Bragg’s office never investigated.
The Fund has so far reimbursed only two of Zekaria’s former clients, despite reports from a court-appointed receiver that around 30 people may have been affected.
“The silence from the Manhattan district attorney remains deafening,” the recipient wrote to Brown last year.
Bragg’s office said it would “review” the complaint and contact the Fund following questions from the publication. A spokesperson said the district attorney “takes financial fraud in Manhattan, and especially attorney misconduct, very seriously.”
The Fund’s chairman, Eric Seiff, admitted that claims without DA findings often stall. In Brown’s case, he said, “If we had any documentation to confirm that the money had been received into Zekaria’s escrow account, it would be a different story.”
Zekaria pleaded guilty to robbing nearly $400,000 from three other clients, stealing escrow funds and performing no legal work despite imposing a substantial fee. She faces six years in prison if she fails to pay the restitution by May.
— Holden Walter Warner
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