CB 15 Member & Heir To Real Estate Fortune Sued By Houseworker For Unpaid Wages
Community Board 15 member Mitchell Shpelfogel, heir to a family real-estate fortune, is being sued by his former houseworker for unpaid wages, according to court documents posted online.
The lawsuit, filed in September on behalf of Gulmira Duisheeva, who worked for Shpelfogel and his wife for more than a year between 2014 and 2015, alleges they paid her a flat rate of $500 a week in cash to work six days a week, from 7am until 10 or 11pm.
Duisheeva’s tasks included cleaning the house, polishing silver, ironing, laundry, washing windows, removing snow, picking up groceries, setting up the home for events, cooking, and caring for the Shpelfogel’s children, according to the lawsuit.
LaDonna Lusher, an attorney representing Duisheeva, said the arrangement violated New York’s minimum wage requirements.
“She’s alleging that she wasn’t paid for all the hours that she worked,” said Lusher. “We are also alleging that [Shpelfogel] doesn’t have any records of the time that she worked and the hours that she worked.”
Lusher explained that Duisheeva, a Russian-speaking immigrant, lived with the Shpelfogel’s at their Manhattan Beach home, which they purchased in 2011 for more than $1.5 million, according to property records.
Shpelfogel did not return a request for comment left at his office, where he works as an attorney specializing in real-estate law. He also sits on Community Board 15’s Public Safety, Zoning and Community Affairs committees.
He is also the son of Brooklyn developer Sam Shpelfogel, who in 2005 was forced to step down from the board of directors for the Brighton Neighborhood Association after the Daily News revealed he had failed to fix more than 400 maintenance violations at one of his Brighton Beach properties.
The city also sued Sam Shpelfogel twice between 2004 and 2008 for having more than 1,000 violations at his properties. The city settled after he fixed them, according to the Daily News.
The Shpelfogels became embroiled in another scandal in 2008 when the Daily News reported that a Brooklyn judge hired then 22-year-old Mitchell right out of law school, before he had even passed the bar exam, after the judge received an $80,000 loan from Mitchel’s brother. The coveted position payed $63,000 a year.
Mitchell was fired from the position months after the news came out, though he still lists the appointment in his profile on the website of his law firm, Pinczewski & Shpelfogel.