Longtime top Brooklyn party leader is running ‘con’ jobs: suit

Longtime Democratic power broker Frank Seddio is an alleged “con artist” who used his political influence to help a businessman defraud investors of $2 million in cash, court documents charge.

Seddio’s alleged machinations have stymied the overseas investors’ nearly year-long effort to claw back the millions they put into an escrow account as they explored a potential business venture with real estate investor Sam Sprei, according to their federal suit filed this month.

It’s one of multiple lawsuits filed in state and federal court that the former Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman is facing over his ties to Sprei.

“Seddio has a history of abusing and manipulating the judicial system, including by submitting knowingly false sworn statements,” the latest suit from Swiss investor Angelos Metaxas and a New Zealand firm, Pertshire Investments LP, claims.

The Brooklyn Federal Court filing accuses the Dem heavyweight of “engaging in blatant forum and judge shopping through which he can utilize his political influence, stemming from his role as the former chair of the Kings County Democratic Committee, in service of Sprei’s schemes.”

Neither Seddio or Sprei replied to a list of questions sent to them.

Lauren Zimmerman, the attorney representing the two aggrieved investors, said she could see similar alleged abuses in roughly a half-dozen other cases filed against Sprei — most of which list Seddio either as an attorney or defendant, including a federal RICO suit filed last spring by stiffed investor David Sofer in Manhattan.

Investors, like her clients, were asked to deposit funds in an escrow account — managed by an allegedly independent third party, escrow agent Mark David Graubard — to prove they had enough cash to close a potential deal along with a signed agreement that they could get the money back anytime, the suit states.

Escrow agents have special fiduciary obligations to depositors, and are bound to follow escrow agreements.

But when the investors decided that the deal was not for them and requested their cash back, delays and excuses allegedly flowed from Graubard — even when attorneys simply asked to confirm he still had the $2 million, according to emails filed in state court.

At one point, Graubard appears to have sent a number confirming a wire transfer, but the funds were never sent, the court documents state.

Graubard and Sprei then allegedly offered the investors a conditional release of the escrow money if they agreed not to file suit, prompting them to report the ostensible theft to police, according to the suit.

Seddio, meanwhile, allegedly filed “a completely bogus action in Kings County Supreme Court” on behalf of Sprei, demanding a restraining order to block its return, according to the lawsuit.

Instead of trying to get the case tossed, Zimmerman and her firm went to court, and for a moment, they appeared to have a judge sympathetic to their clients’ cause.

“Why aren’t we hearing anything about where the money is,” said judge Steven Mostofsky during a July hearing. “Simple question, where is it?”

“I never sanctioned anybody in my entire legal career but this is $2 million dollars and you are putting your client in serious, serious trouble because he is holding on to an escrow and no one knows where it is,” the judge told a lawyer associated with Graubard.

Graubard — who the judge ordered to deposit the funds to the court a few days earlier — could have just showed up with a check, Mostofsky added.

But Seddio then allegedly bizarrely stepped in to help hire an attorney for Graubard — that he knew would force the judge to recuse himself, just minutes before another hearing over the suit, according to the federal court papers.

That’s despite Seddio technically being on the opposite side of Graubard as he was suing him and the investors on behalf of Sprei, the court documents note.

But, minutes before the hearing, he had a new lawyer with some sort of relationship with Mostofsky — a move Seddio takes credit for in the hearing, despite technically being on the opposite side of Graubard.

The new judge has proven to be far less aggressive, with little action in the case since the summer, despite the still-in-place judicial order to deposit the missing millions with the court, according to the federal filing.

Zimmerman’s law firm, Selendy Gay PLLC, says it has ID’ed at least a half-dozen similar cases involving the same crew where “investor money is being illegally withheld, and Mr. Sprei and his associates have held up the cases over the funds’ return,” the attorney said.

“Notably, Mr. Seddio is often the attorney representing Mr. Sprei or his associates,” Zimmerman told The Post. “In some instances, Mr. Seddio is even a named defendant.”

Graubard, who is also named in the federal suit, did not reply to requests for comment.

The effect of Seddio’s alleged “sham lawsuits…is that it makes the victims’ attempts to defend their rights in court so expensive and so time consuming that ultimately, it may not be worth pursuing their lost funds,” Zimmerman said.

The aggrieved investors “previously admired American courts’ commitment to the rule of law,” but now claim that the experience has turned them cold to the American court system. 

“Defendants’ seeming ability to get away with a heist of $2 million in broad daylight, through transparent lies and abuses of legal process, makes a mockery of those ideals. It must be stopped.”