Brooklyn resident Pamela Brown lost her own $53,000 escrow deposit to a real estate attorney who pleaded guilty to stealing from clients, but getting anyone to act on the lost funds has proved nearly impossible.
Brown hired attorney Daphna Zekaria in 2017 to handle a rent dispute with her Park Slope landlord, placing more than $53,000 in Zekaria’s escrow account, New York Focus reported. Years later, Zekaria pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $400,000 from other clients and was disbarred, but Brown has yet to recover her funds.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has largely ignored her repeated complaints, Brown said, even as prosecutors in Suffolk County confirmed the money had vanished from Zekaria’s accounts by 2020.
The inaction has blocked other avenues for restitution. The state-run Lawyer’s Fund for Client Protection, which reimburses victims of attorney theft, denied Brown’s claim this year, partly because Bragg’s office never investigated.
The Fund has reimbursed just two of Zekaria’s former clients to date, despite reports from a court-appointed receiver that roughly 30 people may have been affected.
“The silence from the Manhattan DA continues to be deafening,” the receiver wrote to Brown last year.
Bragg’s office said it would “re-review” the complaint and contact the Fund after questioning from the publication. A spokesperson said the DA takes “financial fraud in Manhattan, especially misconduct by attorneys, very seriously.”
The Fund’s chair, Eric Seiff, admitted that without DA findings, claims often stall. In Brown’s case, he said, “If we had any kind of document to confirm that the money was received in Zekaria’s escrow account, it would make it a different story.”
Zekaria pleaded guilty to robbing almost $400,000 from three other clients, stealing escrow funds and performing no legal work despite imposing a significant fee. She faces six years in prison if she fails to pay restitution by May.
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