A “career con-artist” has turned a swanky Upper West Side building into a veritable flophouse, having rowdy patio sex within earshot of kids, allowing a dog to poop inside the apartment, and stiffing the landlord of $100,000 in rent, a real estate management company said in a lawsuit.
West 60th Street Associates — which manages the townhouse at 245 West 71st Street — accuses Sarid Drory, along with his son, nephew, and the nephew’s girlfriend, of not paying two years worth of rent even as Drory brags of lavish Mediterranean vacations and luxury tastes on social media, according to Manhattan Supreme Court papers filed on Oct. 24.
Drory — who claims to be a chef, entrepreneur, and “mastermind” behind the beloved West Village eatery The Waverly Inn — is described in the court documents as a “career con-artist” with a history of swindling landlords, fabricating documents, and threatening people.
Graydon Carter, the former Vanity Fair editor who founded the Waverly, told The Post, through his wife, that he “had never heard of him.”
Drory and “the next generation of fraudsters he is training” secured the lease for the apartment by providing phony employment documentation for a non-existent restaurant in 2020, the company claimed in the legal filing.
StreetEasy data shows one-bedrooms in the building range from $4,200 to almost $6,000 per month.
In addition to the unpaid rent, Drory, and his associates “let their dogs defecate all over the landlords’ furniture” and woke “the landlord and the landlord’s young children by loudly having sex on the outdoor patio below the landlord’s apartment,” among other things, according to the legal papers.
West 60th Street Associates is seeking $139,035 in damages and $50,000 in legal fees, according to court papers.
The building management company declined to comment, and Drory didn’t answer several attempts by The Post to reach him for comment.
