A Long Island man has been embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a city affordable-housing program, a new lawsuit charges — but his ex-partner says he can’t even get authorities to investigate him.
John Ketsoglou, 54, of East Hills in Nassau County was given scores of low-interest mortgages from the city’s Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program to rehab seven South Bronx apartment buildings, according to a lawsuit filed by former business partner Oscar Perez.
But rather than pay back the loans, Ketsoglou pocketed the dough, the lawsuit says.
“He embezzled all of the money from the city,” Perez told The Post of Ketsoglou, who had two BMWs and a Mercedes Benz parked in his driveway last week.
Ketsoglou handled the buildings’ books, while Perez, 55, of The Bronx oversaw the upkeep, according to court papers.
Perez said he thought things were going smoothly until a meeting earlier this year during which a rep from Enterprise Community Investment asked the pair about hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue mortgage payments and utility bills.
“I was shocked,” Perez told The Post.
He hired a private investigator to look at the buildings’ business records in a six-month period between August 2013 and January.
The investigator discovered that Ketsoglou had embezzled more than $130,000 in just that period by making checks out to cash or vendors that didn’t exist, the court papers state.
Bogus checks also were found that dated back as early as 2008, the lawsuit says, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unaccounted-for money.
Ketsoglou had just been tossing out the late notices for the mortgage payments, the papers say.
Perez told The Post that he went to the police and Bronx District Attorney’s Office in the spring to report the check-cashing scheme but says no one would investigate.
The NYPD and DA’s office did not immediately comment.
The city has taken back the buildings over the overdue mortgage payments.
Perez filed his lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court in May against Ketsoglou.
Ketsoglou refused to answer questions, instead referring a Post reporter to his lawyer. The lawyer did not respond to phone messages for comment.