Emma Rosemurgey
A New York couple are facing thousands of dollars in legal fees for their living 'nightmare' after being sued by alleged squatters.
Juliya Fulman and her husband Denis Kurlyand have so far wracked up $4,000 in bills after being sued by the alleged squatters who are said to be unlawfully living in their $930,000 home.
The invaders are now claiming legal rights to the property thanks to New York laws, which allow squatters to access a number of legal protections after they have occupied a particular property for more than 30 days.
"It’s absolutely absurd. These people literally broke into my house. It’s not fair to us as homeowners that we are not protected by the city," Fulman told the New York Post.
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Her husband added: "You can’t really even blame them in a way because it’s handed to them on a silver platter.
"Something needs to be done because the issue is getting worse. People are taking advantage of these laws, manipulating the laws, and our hands are tied."
Fulman and Kurlyand bought the duplex as an investment property and spent $530,000 renovating it, before finding tenants to live in both units.
However, disaster struck on March 5, when their real estate broker, Ejona Bardhi, discovered the locks had been changed and people were living inside.
She says that on route back to her car, when she planned to call police, she was surrounded by several men who had emerged from the property and were attempting to intimidate her.
The Daily Mail reports that two men told police they had been living at the property since January but quickly left the property.
However, when Bardhi told officers that she and the owners planned to change the locks once again, she was told they would be arrested if they did.
Kurlyand said: "What did we do? Nothing. We put up a property for rent, and that’s it, now we’re dealing with a nightmare."
The following day, the men returned to the property with a document they claimed to be a lease agreement signed by Bardhi, but were later escorted away by police after the owners showed evidence of when the home had been vacant.
The homeowners went on to change the locks to the property, but 10 days later the situation escalated when Bardhi received a court order saying the men were suing her, the homeowners and the company handling the site, Top Nest Properties.
An emergency lockout hearing was held in Queens Civil Court on March 22, where the homeowners' lawyer asked for a trial on the basis the men had 'perpetrated a fraud' with 'forged documents'.
Meanwhile, the alleged squatters' lawyer said the men had shown him 'enough for me to believe they were living there'.
Their attorney Dennis Harris told the Daily Mail: "They showed me a rental application, a lease, text messages and correspondence.
"Is it possible that this is a big scam? Certainly anything is possible, but I don't believe it. If there is a scam they may have been scammed by someone else pretending to be the landlord."
Both the homeowners and the men will next appear in court on April 5, with Kurlyand admitting it's 'scary' to have the decision regarding his own property taken out of his hands.
"As in any courtroom, you never know which way it’s going to go. It’s scary, if the judge decides for whatever reason to rule against us that day, even if we have evidence, there’s nothing we can do at the end of the day, we still have to fight in court," he said.
"Somebody broke into my house, and I’m in court getting sued by them. How can we be here? How is this possible? There have to be safety precautions in place."
An NYPD spokesperson referred UNILAD to the NYPD patrol guide when approached for comment.
The guide states that 'when a uniformed member of service has probable cause to believe that a person has been unlawfully evicted from his dwelling unit', they should effect an arrest if the owner 'refuses to permit occupant to re-enter or who through physical obstruction prevents the occupant from re-entering'.