State Attorney General Letitia James’ office reached a settlement Thursday that closed down a “predatory” law firm with a business model based around siphoning off NYC tenants on the brink of eviction and potentially depriving them of free legal services.
The law business, named the Tenant Counsel Network (TCM), unlawfully scraped the contacts of tenants facing eviction from NYC housing court and pestered them with mailers and calls, trapping them in legal representation agreements that required a monthly subscription fee before they found out about whether they were eligible for free legal services from the city.
The business model, which relied on scam marketing tactics, often left tenants at a disadvantage in court. Its attorneys were largely untrained in housing matters or failed to show up at all, according to the settlement.
“TCN’s success in the unlawful marketing to tenants facing eviction was greater than the success it achieved in representing tenants in court,” reads the settlement.
Under the settlement, TCN has agreed to shut down immediately and stop representing tenants by the end of July, with advance notice to all existing clients. It will be required to pay $172,257 in full or partial refunds to former identified clients, with some getting more than $3,000. Its
President Aryeh Weber will also be required to close his law office, pay $10,000 in penalties, and refrain from practicing law in New York.
“When tenants seek legal counsel, they should be able to trust that their lawyers are going to help them,” said James. “Housing is a stabilizing force for New York families, and this law firm preyed on New Yorkers who stood to lose it.”
According to the AG’s office, the firm’s founders cribbed the business idea from Tony Diab, a disbarred attorney who later admitted in court to running a Ponzi scheme. TCN’s first move as a company was to invest in marketing without any of the legal structures in place to back it up.
When it first started marketing itself to gather a large volume of clients, there were originally no landlord-tenant attorneys on staff, the AG’s investigation found.
TCN began marketing at the end of 2023 with a website that included fictional testimonials from nonexistent customers and promises of legal experience that the organization did not have in place at the time. To find clients, TCN unlawfully scraped a list of tenants facing eviction in New York City from the court system website and sent 35,569 solicitation letters to those tenants offering legal services.
In many cases, the TCN direct mailing arrived before court papers served as the tenant’s first notice of the eviction case. It both confused some tenants, and for others it stopped them from learning about whether they would be eligible for the city’s free legal services right-to-counsel program.
Of the letters that the firm sent, over 1,100 of them used the name of J. Clarksburg, a fake attorney, according to the AG.
Once in court, tenants signed up for the legal service, its attorneys failed to tell tenants in advance of court dates, and in a number of instances failed to show up, according to the AG. Prosecutors found that some of its attorneys failed to demonstrate legal competence. Oftentimes, tenants who retained TCN as their legal representation were never able to have substantial contact with their attorneys.