Many City Marshals Have Been Disciplined for Misconduct, Chief Investigator Testifies

Over the last five years the city Department of Investigation has taken disciplinary action against nearly a dozen of the 28 city marshals who are responsible for collecting financial judgments and executing evictions, DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber revealed Thursday.

During a hearing before the City Council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Strauber did not provide details of the marshals’ actions but said her watchdog agency had filed disciplinary charges against 11 city marshals since 2019.

Until now the only case that’s been publicly disclosed is DOI’s sanctioning of a city marshal named Vadim Barbarovich, who resigned in 2020 after admitting that he’d moved to enforce financial judgments against debtors whose assets are located outside of New York City — assets that are outside the marshals’ jurisdiction.

During the hearing Strauber did not name the marshals who’ve faced sanctions, and DOI did not immediately provide THE CITY with a list of their names. But at least one other marshal, Stephen Biegel, has been accused of doing the same thing Barbarovich did — imposing a lien to collect on a debt from a bank account located outside New York City.

Marshals are tasked with enforcing court-ordered evictions and money judgments. They are unsalaried civilians appointed by the mayor to five-year terms who are allowed to keep 5% of whatever they collect, but must turn over to city coffers 4.5% of the gross amount collected. Some marshals have collected more than $1 million annually.

In Biegel’s case, Zomongo.TV USA Inc., a Delaware-based marketing company, filed a civil suit against him in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday alleging that he’d put a hold on funds in Zomongo’s account in an Arizona bank that has no New York branches. Biegel moved to seize $908,000 pertaining to a judgment for a defaulted loan and another $45,000 in fees marshals are allowed to collect for their efforts called “poundage.”

Zomongo had obtained the loan from Capital Advance Services (CAS), one of 30 companies New York Attorney General Letitia James sued in March , labeling them a predatory lender who used misleading tactics and charged exorbitant interest of more than 600% to small businesses. Zomongo’s suit alleged that CAS “almost exclusively” relied on Biegel to enforce judgments against their debtors in New York.

In 2021 Zomongo asked the court to dismiss the levy imposed by Marshal Biegel and in 2022 Lillian Wan, then a Brooklyn Supreme Court justice (now an appellate division judge), declared the levy void.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Zomongo’s attorney, Ashlee Colonna Cohen, noted the similarity to the DOI case against Barbarovich, the marshal who resigned in 2020.

In that case, DOI examined records related to 107 levies Barbarovich claimed to have served within New York City. DOI demanded documentary proof of service and determined Barbarovich misrepresented to DOI that he’d personally served all 107.

DOI found his official records contained proof of personal service to only 15 of the levies.

Zomongo’s lawsuit accused Biegel of a “brazen and intentional violation of his duties as a New York City marshal” and a “reckless disregard of statutes limiting his authority.” The suit alleged that levy imposed by Biegel “led to the demise of Plaintiff’s business.”

Biegel did not return a request from THE CITY seeking comment on the allegations spelled out in the suit.

During Thursday’s hearing, oversight committee chair Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) pressed Strauber on DOI’s oversight of the marshals, noting that she’d received complaints from the Legal Aid Society about marshals not providing tenants with proper notice of eviction two weeks before executing an eviction as required.

Strauber, who noted DOI had received 550 complaints about city marshals and initiated 30 investigations of them since 2019, noted that her agency has issued a directive to all city marshals about this requirement, and is working on setting up an internet portal where tenants and Legal Aid lawyers could get an immediate alert of a notice once it’s filed.

But she acknowledged that the portal is not yet up and running.

“It’s not clear to me that that portal is working the way we would like it to be,” she said.

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