according to the signed escrow agreements<\/a>, including a clause that Graubard couldn\u2019t touch \u201cany part of the Escrow Deposit for any reason or in any way\u201d without their written permission.<\/p>\nSome of that money may have landed in Brooklyn power broker Frank Seddio\u2019s account, according to the investor\u2019s attorneys.\u00a0 Gregory P. Mango<\/p>\n
Previously, Graubard maintained he had the money, and that he was ready to deposit it with the court when a prior judge on the case ordered him to last summer. He never did.<\/p>\n
The new documents could bolster a long held fear of the investors\u2019 that their money is long gone.<\/p>\n
A separate set of the escrow account records obtained by subpoena in a related federal lawsuit, according to the investors\u2019 attorney Babak Ghafarzade, showed \u201ccertain specific and highly suspicious transactions\u201d \u2014 including one to Seddio\u2019s law firm, which was technically suing Graubard at the time.<\/p>\n
Ghafarzade added that the account was closed out entirely in June, which Graubard had never disclosed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Seddio denied that he ever received a payment from the escrow account.<\/p>\n
Graubard appeared in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday, before the fifth judge in the winding case, to finally produce the bank records for his escrow account months after court orders to do so.<\/p>\n
A trio of sheriff\u2019s deputy sat in the courtroom ready to fulfill an arrest warrant for Graubard issued by Judge Francois Rivera if the lawyer failed to produce the records.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s hearing in Brooklyn Supreme Court was to compel the lawyer to produce bank records \u2013 or face arrest. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot even begin to imagine why an attorney, an officer of the court, would risk everything: his license, his liberty\u2026 to willfully disobey a court order,\u201d said Judge Francois Rivera. Latino Judges Association<\/p>\n
The judge found the bank statement submission lacking due to missing pages and excessive redactions blocking some account balances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Rivera decided the subpoenaed records were sufficient, and\u00a0scheduled a frivolity hearing for March for Graubard over his \u201cfailure to comply with repeated court orders\u201d in lieu of arrest, where each finding could carry a fine of $10,000 each.<\/p>\n
Graubard and his lawyer Israel Goldberg refused to comment after court.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Mark David Graubard called the idea that escrow funds had been misappropriated \u201cpatently false.\u201d Peter Senzamici<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Graubard later sent The Post multiple amended statements, which first claimed he has \u201cfully complied with all laws and judicial rulings regarding this meritless case,\u201d and called the idea that escrow funds had been misappropriated \u201cpatently false.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long winding case, initiated by Seddio allegedly to block the investors from getting their money returned, has meandered through courts for over a year, and is now on its fifth judge due to repeated recusals.<\/a><\/p>\nA concurrent federal lawsuit filed by the investors claiming the former Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair is helping run a \u201ccon job\u201d by abusing the court system. He has denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brooklyn attorney tasked with holding onto $2 million of investor funds made a mystery transfer the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98,10916,3309,2850,57,9,56,63,65,64,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-101452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-supreme-court","10":"tag-frank-seddio","11":"tag-lawsuits","12":"tag-metro","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-nyc-headlines","17":"tag-nyc-news","18":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}