By: Scott Carmellio

Curtis Sliwa and John Gotti Jr. don’t like each other. The son of mobster John Gotti and the founder of the Guardian Angels have been butting heads for years. Both apparently attended the same wedding over the weekend.

“We wrote that Sliwa and Junior — who was accused of kidnapping and attempting to murder Sliwa back in the ’90s — were kept on the opposite sides of the room at the Staten Island nuptials,” the New York Post reported. “Sliwa even told us that he was “mad-dogging” — translation: shooting nasty looks at — Junior all night and that “people were reminding me this was my friend’s wedding — don’t make a scene; don’t get into a dust-up.” (Sliwa only said he was staring at Gotti Jr., and not vice versa.)”

The latest, according to the Post, is that the Gotti family is now saying that Sliwa is making a play in the media about the situation. “Gotti Jr.’s sister Angel tweeted in response to our story, “Sliwa still whoring I see. Big mouth trouble makers NEVER change, always desperate for attention … It was a BEAUTIFUL wedding you Doofus!”

“She told us when reached for comment, “[Sliwa would] sell his kids for attention and publicity. I don’t know who is worse, he or [Gambino family turncoat] John Alite. Two [people] who can’t seem to get attention unless they’re lying about Gotti, Gotti, Gotti!” the Post continued. “Either way, Frank Gotti Albano, grandson of the Dapper Don, chimed in by tweeting: “I sat next to my uncle the entire wedding we had a great time.” He added of Sliwa, “I think he was jealous that more people from the wedding came to our side of the room and lined up to take pics [with] my uncle and my family and no one gave a s–t he was there wearing his goofy red beret.”

Gotti’s name has been out of the headlines since last March, when he criticized law enforcement for – apparently – mistakenly accusing his uncle Gene Gotti of a crime, which had been revealed as a personal dispute involving others.

“I wonder if these tremendously insightful law enforcement individuals are going to issue an apology to Gene Gotti,” Junior, 55, told The Post. “He has grandchildren and to have to endure the last several days of that propaganda nonsense. I’m sure it was hurtful to the kids and this is the problem we have today,” he said.

By: Carly Matthewson

Former bartender Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has gotten herself into trouble again.

A federal says he wants to hear from AOC about her decision to block some Twitter followers.

“I think she has to testify here,” said Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block. His comments came during a hearing yesterday regarding the lawsuit launched by one-time elected official Dov Hikind, who says he has been blocked from AOC’s Twitter feed.

“Block, after seeing hundreds of pages of tweets entered into evidence, said he believed hearing from the freshman member of Congress was necessary to decide whether to toss the suit or let the case proceed. Ocasio-Cortez boasts a staggering 5.4 million Twitter followers — even without Hikind,” reported the New York Daily News. “The former state Assemblyman took on the media-savvy Ocasio-Cortez when she gave him the Twitter boot in a spat over her description of federal immigration detention centers as “concentration camps.” He griped that AOC was violating his First Amendment rights, citing a recent decision declaring President Trump’s blocking of Twitter trolls was unconstitutional.”

Hikind said in court that he does not “personally send the tweets in his account — one of his staffers handles the “clicking” once he’s taken care of “the wording.” There was also discussion about the difference between AOC’s two Twitter accounts: One government-issued, the other her personal/campaign feed,” the Daily News added. “Lawyers for AOC also noted that Hikind did not live in her Bronx-Queens district, but rather in the Manhattan-Brooklyn area represented by Jerrold Nadler.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s mouth continues to land her in trouble, even with those in her own political party. Most recently, she went public with her opinion that Congress should impeach the president even if it eventually loses them the upcoming elections.

“I personally do not believe in fulfilling my obligations to my job based on polling data,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN. “I think we need to do our job and we’ve been elected and sent here by the people of the United States of America to fulfill all of our obligations under the Constitution of the United States.”

“The freshman congresswoman stressed that the polling on impeachment took place before what she described as a “really shattering allegation” that Trump attempted to leverage foreign aid to Ukraine in order to renew an investigation into former Vice President and 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. She also noted that the new revelations about Trump’s contacts with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has “united almost the entire Democratic caucus,” Fox News reported.

“I think the ground has shifted. I don’t believe in making decisions based on polling,” Ocasio-Cortez also told CNN. “I believe in our ability to organize the public, to educate the public, to talk to the public about why not just we as members of Congress much impeach the president but why all people in the United States of America must recognize and understand that need to put our country first before our consideration of reelection. And that goes for members of Congress all the way up to the president of the United States.”

By Clark Savage, Jr.

Alex Rodriguez has bought anoth er apartment building here in New York City.

Rodriguez is in contract to buy a 114-unit brick apartment house at 340 E. 51 St., according to the New York Post. He paid “less than $100 million” for the 14-story Turtle Bay building, known as “The Allen House,” where rent for 423-square-foot studio apartments costs $2,550 a month, according to StreetEasy.

“The plan is to spruce up the place, including a gym, which will allow for higher rents on fair market units, Rodriguez’s partner, Ofer Yardeni of Stonehenge NYC, told The Post. “As apartments are vacated they will also be upgraded, including electrical service, flooring and stainless steel washers and dryers in every unit. “You can do it since over 90 percent of the units are at fair market rents,” which creates natural turnover, Yardeni said.”

Rodriguez, “who is engaged to “Hustlers” star Jennifer Lopez, already owns more than 15,000 apartments in 13 states through his Monument Capital Management. He first dipped his toe into the New York City real estate market in June after meeting Corcoran on ABC’s “Shark Tank” and chipping in to buy a small East Village building,” the Post added.

The former slugger has taken quite an interest in real estate. According to businessinsider.com, “According to Mansion Global’s sources, A-Rod sold his Hollywood Hills home to an unknown buyer for $4.4 million in a sale finalized earlier this month. He first listed the home last November for $6.5 million and eventually lowered the asking price to $5.25 million in March. The retired baseball pro was repped by Carl Gambino from Westside Estate Agency in the sale. Rodriguez purchased the property from Meryl Streep in 2014 for $4.8 million, meaning that he offloaded the property at a slight loss.”

Of course, life in general is good when you are Alex Rodriguez. He was out in public today telling anyone who would listen that he “couldn’t be more proud of his fiancee for landing the Super Bowl LIV halftime show! The Yankee legend shared a sweet message in honor of JLo, soon after news of her iconic gig was announced!,” according to hollywoodlife.com.

“Alex Rodriguez can’t wait to bring it back home to Miami for Super Bowl LIV! The former MLB star, who has a home there with Jennifer Lopez, congratulated his fiancee after she landed the coveted Super Bowl halftime show. “So proud and SO EXCITED! Bringing it home! Going to set the #305”, he captioned the official promo photo of JLo, alongside Shakira, who will also co-headline the February 2 performance. “Going to set the world on ???,” the web site added.

By Howard M. Riell

Mark Zuckerberg is not an Elizabeth Warren supporter – to say the least.

In fact, he is reported to have told many of his Facebook employees he plans to “go to the mat” with her should she become president.

“The giant social network’s CEO, striking a defiant tone against critics at an all-hands meeting in July that was secretly captured on audio, said Facebook would fight tooth-and-nail against any attempt to break up the company,” reported the New York Post. “The 35-year-old tech tycoon added that he expects a legal challenge from Warren if she is elected to the White House, according to audio obtained by The Verge.”

“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win that legal challenge,” Zuckerberg told his employees,” according to the Post. “And does that suck for us? Yeah,” Zuckerberg added. “I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government.” But “if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

Wrote Warren on Twitter: “What would really ‘suck’ is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy,” the Democratic presidential candidate wrote.”

Warren introduced her proposal to break up Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants in March. To get her message across, she also paid for a billboard in San Francisco that read “Break Up Big Tech,” in capital letters.

“On Tuesday, nearly seven months after Ms. Warren first unveiled her plan, The Verge offered a window into what Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, thinks about it. In leaked audio recordings of open meetings with employees this summer, Mr. Zuckerberg can be heard saying that the company would sue if Ms. Warren were to enact the plan as president,” reported The New York Times. ““If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge,” he said.

“The Massachusetts Democrat and presidential hopeful for 2020 has been at the epicenter of calls to break up technology giants like Facebook Inc., as well as Google-parent Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.,” Barron’s reported.

“Today’s big tech companies have too much power—too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else,” she wrote in a March blog post on Medium.”

By: Lucy Alcindor

Time to make the donuts, indeed.

Dunkin’ Donuts Inc. is being sued for cyberattacks that resulted in the theft of tens of thousands of dollars.

According to reports, hackers accessed money stored on Dunkin value cards of nearly 20,000 customers who created accounts through Dunkin’s website and mobile apps four years ago.The parent company of the chain is being sued by the New York Attorney General for failing to notify customers of the attacks.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said the company failed to notify nearly 20,000 customers that their accounts had been compromised, even though their information and personal funds were in jeopardy. Dunkin’ also failed to conduct an investigation into a series of attacks that would have helped it determine which other accounts had been compromised, what customer information had been acquired, and whether customer funds had been stolen.

“Dunkin’ failed to protect the security of its customers,” said James. “And instead of notifying the tens of thousands impacted by these cybersecurity breaches, Dunkin’ sat idly by, putting customers at risk. My office is committed to protecting consumer data and holding businesses accountable for implementing safe security practices.”

The lawsuit involves accounts of the company’s customers created through the Dunkin’ website or free mobile app for Android and iOS devices, according to a release. These accounts enable customers to manage “DD cards” — stored value cards that customers can use to make purchases at both Dunkin’ stores and online. To encourage customers to create accounts, Dunkin’ represented that the company was using reasonable safeguards to protect customers’ personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access and disclosure.

“Beginning in early 2015, customer accounts were targeted in a series of “brute force attacks,” which are repeated, automated attempts to gain access to accounts, often using usernames and passwords stolen through security breaches of other unrelated websites or online services. An attacker that gained access to a customer’s Dunkin’ account could not only use DD cards registered to the account to make purchases, but could also sell the DD cards online. In a matter of months, tens of thousands of customer accounts were compromised through these attacks, and tens of thousands of dollars on customers’ DD cards were stolen,” the attorney general’s office said.

By May 2015, Dunkin’ personnel were receiving customer reports that attackers were gaining access to their accounts. Additionally, over a period of several months during the summer of 2015, a third-party app developer for Dunkin’ repeatedly alerted the company to attackers’ ongoing attempts to log in to customer accounts, and even provided Dunkin’ with a list of 19,715 accounts that had been compromised by attackers over just a five-day period.

“Yet, Dunkin’ failed to take any steps to protect these nearly 20,000 customers — or the potentially thousands more they did not know about — by notifying them of unauthorized access, resetting their account passwords to prevent further unauthorized access, or freezing their DD cards. Dunkin’ also failed to conduct any investigation into or analysis of the attacks to determine how many more customer accounts had been compromised, what customer information had been acquired, and whether customer funds had been stolen,” the release added.

By Hellen Zaboulani

Most of Manhattan real estate is known to be owned by large scale businesses. A large portion of this is in the form of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), which allow individuals to invest in professionally managed real estate portfolios thereby reaping Income and dividend yields. Assets owned by these REITs typically include office buildings, shopping malls, apartments, hotels, resorts, self-storage facilities, warehouses, and even loans. Many REITs are publicly traded, and registered by the SEC.

A recent article in Crain’s NY business, ranked the top five largest REITs. The ranking is based on the amount of square footage of space each REIT owns in the New York area.

First on the list is Vornado Realty Trust, which is led by Chairman Steven Roth, and is publicly traded on the NY Stock Exchange as VNO. The company was formed in Maryland in 1982, and headquartered in NYC. It boasts 3,928 employees and more importantly it owns 32.61 million sq ft. in the NY area, spanning across 82 properties. In 2018, Vornado made $2.164 billion in revenue, and had $776.4 million in funds from operations. Notable NYC buildings owned by Vornado include 731 Lexington Avenue, the 1,345,489 sq ft mixed-use glass skyscraper in Midtown; the 40-story commercial building at 330 Madison Avenue; and the popular Marriott Marquis hotel at 1535 Broadway.

Next on the list of largest REITs is SL Green Realty Corp. Traded as SLG on the NYSE, the company was founded by Stephen L. Green. Marc Holliday serves as Chairman and CEO. The fund prides itself for investing in NYC office buildings and shopping centers. The fund owns 30.69 millions square feet of property in the NY area, across 68 properties, as per Crain’s NY. In 2018, the company had $1.279 billion in revenue and $605.7 million in funds from operations. Properties include the prestigious Manhattan addresses: One Vanderbilt Avenue, 1515 Broadway, 280 Park Avenue, 100 Park Avenue, 625 Madison Avenue, and 1350 Avenue of Americas.

Third on the list is Mack- Cali Realty Corp, traded as CLI. Founded in 1997, it is headquartered in Jersey City, NJ and specializes in premier office space, and multi-family complexes. The company owns 17.74 million square feet of space in the NY area, spanning across 51 properties. It made $548 million in revenue for 2018, and had $170.4 million in funds from operations.

The fourth largest REIT, as ranked by Crain’s, is Boston Properties Inc, traded as BXP. The company, founded in 1970, is known as is one of the largest owners, managers and developers of Class A office properties in the U.S. It owns 10.49 million square feet, in just 8 NY area properties. The company made $2.72 billion in revenue in 2018, and had $1.084 billion in funds from operations.

Last on the top five list, is AvalonBay Communities Inc, traded as AVB. It owns 10.14 million sq ft of real estate in the NY area, throughout 43 properties. In 2018, the company made 2.289 billion in revenue, and had an impressive $1.21 billion in funds from operations.

By Pat Savage

Endeavor Group has ended its initial public offering.

The reason, reportedly, is that it would have cost Ari Emanuel and his partner close to half a billion dollars.

The California-based firm, which owns the William Morris Endeavor talent agency, slammed on the brakes the day before it was to have begun trading. According to reports, the stock would have begun trading at just $20 per share.

“A New York Stock Exchange listing at $20 would have given Endeavor — which also owns half of the Ultimate Fighting Championship — a market cap of just $4.9 billion. But Emanuel did not believe the company’s worth has fallen since it was valued at $8 billion in a 2017 funding round that fetched $32 a share, sources said,” reported the New York Post. “He made it clear the IPO was undervaluing the company,” a source said of Emanuel, who inspired the Ari Gold character on HBO’s “Entourage” TV show.”

“Of course,” the Post continued, “an IPO at $20 a share would have also taken a pretty penny out of Emanuel’s pocket. The Endeavor CEO — together with executive chairman Patrick Whitesell— owns 39.6 million Endeavor shares. At $20 a share, that stake would be worth just $792 million — or $475 million less than in the 2017 fundraising round.”

The SEC filing said, “Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $27.00 per share (the highpoint of the estimated public offering price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus), we estimate that the net proceeds from this offering will be $361.6 million (or $419.3 million if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full), after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us.”

“The company, Hollywood’s biggest talent agency owner, was hoping to raise more than $600 million. It’s the latest black eye for the IPO market, as investors see companies as overpriced. Peloton Interactive had a disappointing debut earlier Thursday, following the disappointing debuts of Lyft and Uber earlier this year and the WeWork cataclysm of the past month,” reported cnbc.com. “The difficult market environment for such high profile IPOs was seen as a negative for the broader market. Endeavor scaled back its offering in a Security and Exchange Commission filing Thursday, saying that it expected to debut the price of its shares between $26 to $29, which is below the $30 to $32 range it estimated last week.”

By: Casey Hardwick

Michael T. Mann has been charged with being the alleged scammer behind MyPayrollHR’s collapse.

Federal prosecutors said the vast $70 million bank fraud began almost 10 years ago.

Mann, 49, was reportedly released on bond following the carnage in early September at his payroll company left thousands across the nation without paychecks.

“As part of his con, Mann allegedly diverted clients’ payroll payments away from hard-working customers depending on the dough to a separate bank account he controlled, prosecutors said,” according to the New York Daily News. “Many victims saw more than one of their direct-deposit checks reversed, the Daily News previously reported. Others lost not only their earnings but also their jobs with the sudden shuttering of HireFlux, a North Carolina-based staffing firm partially owned by Mann that employed per diem nurses around the New York metro area.”

According to the complaint released Monday, Mann fraudulently obtained at least $70 million in loans from banks and other financial institutions by creating fake companies with non-existent receivables starting in 2010 or 2011.

When MyPayrollHR closed on September 5, “about $30 million in paychecks due to the company’s clients went missing. According to the Journal, about 8,000 employees at 400 different companies were impacted. The FBI launched an investigation into MyPayRollHR and raided Mann’s home on September 16 in search of evidence,” reported businessinsider.com.

According to the court filing, Mann told law enforcement that he had transferred the money needed to fund the payroll payments to one of his personal bank accounts. “Mann apparently said he transferred the money to an account controlled by Pioneer Bancorp Inc. to temporarily address an outstanding debt. However, Pioneer froze Mann’s account, preventing him from cycling the money back out to the appropriate payroll accounts, per the report,” businessinsider.com added. “The Journal reports that Bank of America Corp also froze Mann’s accounts when it was determined that he was transferring millions of dollars between accounts at Bank of America and Pioneer. Cachet, the firm responsible for dispersing the paychecks, reversed the deposits to MyPayrollHR’s clients when it could no longer access the money, the report says.”

According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Albany on Friday, Mann “began borrowing “large sums of money” starting around 2010. Mann insisted that MyPayrollHR was a legitimate company, but admitted to creating other companies “that had no purpose other than to be used in fraud,” the complaint says,” reported pymnts.com. “Mann did not enter a plea and was released on a $200,000 bond secured by his home and two cars. He faces up to 30 years in prison, a maximum $1 million fine and five years of post-release supervision, the WSJ reported.”

By: Howard Riell

In the world of backbiting celebrities, the people you hate the most are those who won’t agree to hate the other people you hate.

Case in point: Dylan Farrow, who has made a career of claiming she was raped by Woody Allen, is now angry at actress Scarlett Johansson.

The Avengers actress said during an interview in The Hollywood Reporter that she believes the director when he denies having molested his adopted daughter Farrow when she was 7 years old.

“I love Woody,” Johannson said. “I believe him, and I would work with him anytime

Farrow “took to social media and publicly aired her disappointment with the Marvel star. She framed her disgust by referencing the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements — which Johansson has publicly supported in recent years,” the New York Daily News has reported.

Farrow tweeted, “Because if we’ve learned anything from the past two years it’s that you definitely should believe male predators who “maintain their innocence” without question. Scarlett has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion.”

“In 2014, Farrow, whose mother is actress Mia Farrow, wrote an open letter in The New York Times, detailing for the first time in public what she allegedly went through,” the Daily News reported. “I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house,” she wrote. “He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies.”

Farrow has also displayed rage at other celebrities who have failed to hate Allen. She tweeted, for example, “What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?”

“As noted in her Hollywood Reporter profile, Johansson has been involved in the Time’s Up movement since its early days. But in Allen’s case, she said, “I see Woody whenever I can, and I have had a lot of conversations with him about it. I have been very direct with him, and he’s very direct with me. He maintains his innocence, and I believe him,” vanityfair.com reported.

“It’s hard because it’s a time where people are very fired up, and understandably,” Johansson added—alluding to the current environment in which, as THR puts it, “there is a new and powerful emphasis on believing women’s allegations,” vanityfair.com continued. “Things needed to be stirred up,” Johansson continued, “and so people have a lot of passion and a lot of strong feelings and are angry, and rightfully so. It’s an intense time.”

The stink around WeWork Chief Executive Adam Neumann has apparently attached itself to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Some are complaining that the bank went too far in growing Neumann’s personal loans. Neumann stepped down last week as CEO of WeWork’s parent company, We Co. The problem, according to many, was too much spending.

“JPMorgan, along with UBS and Credit Suisse, helped Neumann with a $500 million personal line of credit that allowed him to buy buildings that he then leased back to WeWork — drawing backlash when the dealings came to light ahead of the now-defunct IPO,” the New York Post has reported. “That same credit line also allowed Neumann to cash out a big chunk of his shares, which also angered many investors, according to reports.”

All told, the Post continued, JPMorgan “provided Neumann with $97.5 million in loans, according to filings. And Dimon was known to have dealt with Neumann on a one-to-one basis, sources said. JPMorgan later became We Co.’s lead IPO underwriter, a deal that should have resulted in $100 million in fees. But demand for the shares fell short of expectations, in part due to questions about Neumann’s self-dealing. The IPO was called off and Neumann was out a week later.”

Days ago, WeWork’s Board of Directors announced that Neumann had decided to step back from his role as CEO, and will continue on as non-executive chairman of the board. WeWork’s Artie Minson, formerly co-president and chief financial officer, and Sebastian Gunningham, formerly vice chairman, have been named co-CEOs of the company.

Said Neumann in a statement, “As co-founder of WeWork, I am so proud of this team and the incredible company that we have built over the last decade. Our global platform now spans 111 cities in 29 countries, serving more than 527,000 members each day. While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive. Thank you to my colleagues, our members, our landlord partners, and our investors for continuing to believe in this great business.”

Added Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham, “We would like to thank Adam for his vision and his passion in building WeWork over the past 9 years. Our innovative membership model, beautiful designs and inventive community offerings have changed the way individuals and enterprises around the world think about their workspaces. It is an incredible honor to lead WeWork during this important moment in the company’s history. Our core business is strong and we will be taking clear actions to balance WeWork’s high growth, profitability and unique member experience while also evaluating the optimal timing for an IPO. We are committed to the continued success of our members, partners, employees and shareholders on this new journey.”