{"id":267724,"date":"2026-06-15T19:52:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/267724\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T19:52:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:52:20","slug":"yonkers-lawyer-sues-clients-for-1-5m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/267724\/","title":{"rendered":"Yonkers lawyer sues clients for $1.5M"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Yonkers lawyer is demanding $1.5 million from clients who criticized his handling of a tenant eviction.<\/p>\n

Matthew Aqeel accused New Rochelle residents Marina Naguib and Marco Gabra of defamation, in a complaint filed on June 11 in Westchester Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the very least,\u201d Aqeel says, his former clients\u2019 actions \u201camount to negligence, recklessness or wanton disregard for plaintiff\u2019s reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Aqeel, a graduate of Boston College Law School, has been practicing law in New York since 2021. He boasts on his website of fast, focused, and effective legal help for landlords, and of receiving more than fifty 5-star reviews.<\/p>\n

Naguib and Gabra live on Beattie Lane in New Rochelle in a 3-bedroom house that Naguib bought for $600,000 in 2024.<\/p>\n

Aqeel was hired to evict a tenant.<\/p>\n

Naguib allegedly posted a 1-star review of Aqeel\u2019s business on Google, under the name \u201cMarinN.\u201d She stated that the tenant moved out voluntarily before the matter went to court. Aqeel was paid in advance and \u201cdespite the case no longer needing legal action, the office refused to refund our money or work with us fairly regarding the unused services.\u201d<\/p>\n

MarinN said communications were disappointing, they felt ignored once payment was made and she recommended getting refund policies in writing before hiring the firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expected professionalism, transparency, and reasonable customer service,\u201d the review states, \u201cbut unfortunately that was not our experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aqeel posted a response, \u201cso everyone understands the full story.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he had provided free legal services, \u201cbecause you were having a hard time with the New Rochelle Building Department for renting out an illegal basement.\u201d Then he was hired to evict the tenant, who did not leave voluntarily, but because of his work.<\/p>\n

He indicates that Naguib had initially given him a 5-star Google review.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all the work my office did including promptly answering all your calls and emails, drafting the predicate notice, drafting the notice of petition and [the] petition, filing the paperwork and serving your tenant, you and your husband had the gall to ask for a full refund, which I denied even after I was threatened with a 1 star google review.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aqeel argues that the couple published false statements that have harmed his reputation. He accused them of defamation, libel, slander, and tortious interference with business relations.<\/p>\n

Naguib did not reply to a message asking for her response to the allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Yonkers lawyer is demanding $1.5 million from clients who criticized his handling of a tenant eviction. Matthew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-267724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267724","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=267724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}