Bert Dweck of Dweck Group is battling mounting lawsuits over allegations of unpaid loans, bounced checks and refusal to return escrow cash.
The Brooklyn-based dealmaker is dealing with seven lawsuits in New York state court docket. In complete, traders and lenders are searching for at the least $14.4 million.
Taken collectively, the instances paint an image of a dealer whose alleged money crunch spiraled throughout a number of actual property offers and private lending relationships. A number of lawsuits accuse Dweck of failing to return cash that was supposed to stay in escrow accounts, whereas others allege he solicited funds for offers that both stalled, collapsed or by no means materialized.
The authorized drama is reverberating via Brooklyn’s tight-knit Syrian Jewish, which Dweck and his household are part of. His father and mom, Isaac Dweck and Marlene Dweck, have additionally been named in some lawsuits.
The lawsuits started piling up in December, when 5 firms filed a lawsuit in New York state court docket alleging he stole $2.8 million tied to a few actual property offers: 1526 Grand Concourse within the Bronx, and 4188 and 4910 Broadway in Manhattan.
In keeping with the grievance, every deal adopted an identical sample: Dweck approached traders with a possibility to accumulate a property, the traders wired funds, and Dweck would allegedly disappear with the cash. The traders allege Dweck even offered phony paperwork as a part of the deal.
The traders, led by a bunch known as Patriarch President Capital, say Dweck’s lawyer, Jacques Erdos, assisted within the alleged fraud by releasing escrow funds on to Dweck.
Dweck denied the allegations in a response submitting. His legal professional declined to remark.
In a press release, Erdos’s lawyer stated “Erdos was Dweck’s legal professional and disputes the allegations asserted towards himself, denies wrongdoing, and believes the claims towards himself lack benefit.”
The allegations within the Patriarch case weren’t remoted. Inside weeks, one other lawsuit surfaced accusing Dweck of soliciting massive sums of cash for property offers that allegedly by no means closed.
Two weeks after the Patriarch lawsuit was filed, Bronx grocery store house owners Luis Manuel Diaz and Senelda Diaz sued Dweck and alleged affiliate Mark Benum for fraud.
The Diazes, who personal a C-town grocery store in Parkchester, alleged Dweck and Benum had claimed they represented the proprietor of a neighboring constructing they wished to buy. The Diazes despatched over $1.44 million to Dweck and Benum. However when the closing on the property occurred in Could 2023, Dweck and Benum allegedly by no means confirmed up. The precise property proprietor had no information of funds from the Diazes, based on the lawsuit.
The Diazes allege Dweck and Benum concocted an identical scheme on one other property. Dweck and Benum satisfied Diazes to enter right into a partnership and created an LLC to purchase a former Apple Financial institution at 74 Hugh J. Grant Circle within the Bronx. The Diazes despatched over $1.37 million in funds. The Diazes later found the LLC by no means purchased the financial institution and was dissolved in October 2023.
The lawsuit alleges Dweck and Benum haven’t returned the cash. Dweck denied the allegations in a authorized submitting.
Dangerous checks
As traders accused Dweck of mishandling deal cash, lenders had been concurrently alleging he had stopped repaying tens of millions of {dollars} in private loans.
Gary Porat of Brooklyn filed a lawsuit in January alleging Dweck owed him practically $6 million tied to a sequence of loans relationship again to early 2023.
In keeping with the grievance, Porat continued extending credit score to Dweck even after earlier loans fell into misery. Dweck allegedly signed confessions of judgment agreeing to repay the quantities owed, and at one level, proposed including Isaac and Marlene as guarantors on future loans to reassure Porat.
By late 2025, Dweck had already defaulted on parts of the debt, based on the lawsuit. In December 2025, he allegedly defaulted once more, leaving roughly $5.88 million excellent.
Porat additional alleged Dweck tried to cowl some funds with dangerous checks. Between Could 24, 2024 and November 19, 2025, 130 checks and ACH transfers totaling roughly $5.5 million had been returned or bounced, based on the grievance.
Dweck allegedly tried to pay one other invoice with dangerous checks. Mordechai Samet of Monroe, New York, filed a lawsuit alleging Dweck, his associates and household issued checks to Samet with inadequate funds, frozen accounts, and even non-existent accounts, to pay excellent obligations. The worth of the checks complete $1.9 million, based on Samet.
Dweck confronted one more lawsuit in February. Bay Group Improvement alleged it entered right into a three way partnership with Dweck Group to accumulate a property at 6401 Fort Hamilton Parkway, Brooklyn. As a part of that transaction, Bay Group offered a $500,000 deposit, however Dweck Group has allegedly did not return it. Bay Group claims the deposit “might have been misappropriated, transformed, or commingled with different funds by Erdos and/or Dweck,” the grievance stated.
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