Manhattan officials say they’ve caught their first – but, they swear, not their last – outlaw Internet hotel mogul.
Israeli businessman Raziel Ofer, 48, controlled hundreds of units at swanky uptown addresses, prosecutors said yesterday.
Advertising through his Woogo and Global Hotels Web sites, Ofer would offer the apartments to business travelers and vacationers needing places to stay for a night or a month.
But he never owned a single one of these “hotel” apartments – some of them in actual hotels.
He would sublet them from their owners, who may or may not have been aware he’d use them for transients, said Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau.
What tripped Ofer up was not his failure to get the proper licensing or city approval but his admitted failure to turn over to the city and state some $1.3 million collected in sales taxes from his guests, the DA said.
“These illegal hotels are getting to be more and more of a problem,” said Morgenthau.
Ofer pleaded guilty to grand larceny and faces up to 25 years in prison unless he pays the taxes plus half a million dollars in interest and penalties.
His accommodations included rooms in the Central Park Hotel on West 73rd Street and the Lincoln Center Hotel on West 64th – and as many as 50 at a time at the Encore Hotel on West 53rd Street. Many of his other apartments were in residential buildings, including the Belnord on West 87th Street.