A real-estate broker who owns six properties — including an Upper West Side condo and a home in East Hampton — is hoping to avoid the Big House for scamming an apartment in a public-housing project.
Russian immigrant Natalia Dyaskovskaya, 65, “is sincere in her contrition” for defrauding nearly $80,000 in rental subsidies for her former “small, one-bedroom apartment” in the Vladeck Houses on the Lower East Side, her defense lawyer wrote in court papers yesterday.
“Coming from the former Soviet Union, she grew up with very little,” Steven Kartagener wrote.
“Knowing that it was wrong, defendant nonetheless kept over the years the apartment . . . so that, in an emergency, she would always have a safe haven to return to in the event that she lost everything else.”
Earlier this year, Dyaskovskaya pleaded guilty to a count of theft of government funds for the scam.
The Manhattan federal court filing also says that Dyaskvoska is currently in “dire financial straits” has rented out all her properties and “now often has to ask her friends for a place to stay each night.”