Landlord on LIFE SUPPORT sued over $23K loan taken out during Covid rent moratorium
A US landlord, who is in a critical condition after contracting Covid-19, has now been slapped with two lawsuits over a $23,000 high-interest loan, which he was forced to take out during the pandemic related rent moratorium.
Bronx landlord Jeffrey Schneider took the loan from a lending company to compensate for his rising expenses and is now finding it difficult to repay the remaining interest which had now ballooned to a whopping $58,000.
Schneider is now being sued by Premier Capital Funding LLC to repay $58,000 for the loan he took out in May through his company Remie Realty Corp, according to court papers filed by Schneider’s wife Cindy. Schneider, who owns a rent-controlled building in the Bronx, had to go through a $23,000 life line when his struggling tenants stopped paying rent, the court filing says.
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Well, it wasn't like Schneider didn't try to repay the loan, in fact he managed to pay back $25,000 of the roughly $35,000 total he owed on the high-interest loan before coronavirus nearly killed him.
"This debt that started out with the merchant [Remie] receiving $23,000 has now exploded into an $85,000 debt,” Schneider family lawyer Ashlee Colonna Cohen told The Post. “He’s already paid $25,000 of it and they are still asking for more.”
The situation drastically turned upside down for Schneider as he is reportedly being treated on ventilator support and is battling for his life due to the coronavirus infection. According to the affidavit, "The virus has left him on a ventilator and extracorporeal life support and is continuously fighting for his life."
The New Jersey resident fell on hard times during the pandemic as the state eviction moratorium allowed for many of his tenants to stop paying rent, leaving him without any recourse and “severely hampering [his company’s] ability to generate revenue,” the wife’s affidavit explains.
Jeffrey contracted the virus in early November and was admitted in the hospital by November 7, according to the court papers. Schneider's wife said she was unaware that her husband “sought short term, extremely high interest, loans called ‘merchant cash advances’ to help with the shortage of funds” – including the one from Premier that he would need to repay to the tune of $35,750 under the agreement. The family offered to fork up the $11,000 of the remaining debt “in a lump sum and they still rejected it. They wanted their fees,” Colonna Cohen, the family's lawyer, said.
Premier has bought yet another suit against Remie in Manhattan Supreme Court for another $20,000 in connection to the same loan. However, Cohen called the second case as 'double dipping' and accused the company of filing it in a different county “to avoid being detected as a double judgment.” She also said that the company was aware of Schneider's condition, but is deliberately bothering him over and over again.