NYC property manager agrees to pay after AG says it illegally locked tenants out

A property management company that owns and operates more than 40 buildings across New York City has agreed to pay more than $20,000 in penalties for illegally evicting people from their apartments, according to a settlement signed this week.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said Brooklyn-based Spigro Management, LLC and its lead property manager Saul Friedman violated state and city law by changing the locks on people’s apartments without a court order.

“Spigro callously violated the trust, safety and privacy of occupants by illegally changing their locks while they were not home,” James said in a statement. “Attempting to evict people from their homes by sneaking in and changing the locks is as sinister as it is shameful.”

The management company and Friedman did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, and an attorney representing them did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many of Spigro Management’s properties are co-op and condo buildings where some long-term tenants live in rent-stabilized units, according to the attorney general’s office.

Rent stabilized units are at the center of a fiery debate between New York City tenant advocates and landlords, with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration championing a rent freeze as landlords say they need more rental income to break even. A group of landlords who own rent-stabilized units sued the city’s Rent Guidelines Board earlier this week, after board members voted in June to freeze the rent on regulated units for the next two years.

James' office identified 14 people who have filed lawsuits alleging they were unlawfully evicted from Spigro Management’s and Friedman’s properties since 2020. The office said its investigation confirmed that in at least four cases occupants were illegally locked out.

Under state law, it’s illegal to evict — or try to evict — someone from a unit they have lawfully occupied for at least 30 days, unless the landlord has a court order. A separate city law classifies changing the locks on lawful occupants as a form of tenant harassment.

In one case, East New York resident Michael Brown was locked out of the rent-stabilized apartment he had lived in with his adopted mother for more than 20 years after she died in December 2024, according to the AG’s office.

Brown said in court papers that he left the apartment for a few minutes to take out the trash about a week after her death. When he came back and tried to unlock the door, his key no longer worked, he said. His ID, winter coat and other belongings were all locked inside.

“At this point I was locked out of the only home I had ever lived in,” Brown said in court papers, adding: “I was effectively homeless while still grieving the extremely recent death of my mother.”

For nine months after his mother’s death, Brown slept in the hallway of his apartment building, on a cot at work and on friends’ couches while he fought for access to his home in court, he said in the filings. He submitted pay stubs and photos of his IDs that list the Flatlands Avenue apartment as his address, he said. But the landlord claimed the unit had already been leased to someone else, further complicating his case, he said.

Last September, the property owner agreed to settle the case and allow Brown back into his apartment, according to an agreement filed in the court docket.

In two cases in the Bronx, the AG’s office found residents were unlawfully locked out of rent-stabilized apartments they had lived in for years after the primary tenant died. The AG’s office also determined that a man who worked as a porter at one of Spigro Management’s buildings in Brooklyn was illegally locked out of the basement, where he had been living, when he underwent surgery after suffering an injury on the job.

The settlement signed this week requires Spigro Management and Friedman to pay $23,500 in penalties, which will be held in a state fund that helps to pay for affordable housing initiatives. They also have to pay between $1,000 and $1,200 to each of the four people who the AG’s office found were illegally evicted.

Spigro Management agreed in the settlement to write an internal policy for lock changes and keep a record of each time it changes the locks, along with a legal justification.

Between August 2024 and August 2025, New Yorkers were illegally locked out of their homes more than 1,800 times, according to City Council data.