Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article identified the subject only as "Bert Dweck." Because more than one individual with closely similar names works in New York commercial real estate, this article now identifies the person at the center of the lawsuits described below as Bert "Ike" Dweck — referred to in court filings as Bert I. Dweck — of Dweck Group. He is not to be confused with other New York real estate professionals who share variations of the name. The article has been updated for clarity, and we regret any confusion the earlier version may have caused.
A widening cluster of civil fraud lawsuits filed in New York state court is reshaping how investors and small-business owners in Brooklyn's commercial real estate scene talk about Bert "Ike" Dweck. Seven complaints filed since late 2025 collectively seek at least $14.4 million from the Brooklyn dealmaker, and they share a recurring shape: money wired for property acquisitions that, according to plaintiffs, either never closed or never returned to them. The cases name Bert "Ike" Dweck and, in several instances, his parents and business associates — and they land at a moment when New York's commercial real estate industry is reckoning with an unusually busy stretch of escrow-related litigation.
Who Is Bert "Ike" Dweck?
Bert "Ike" Dweck operates as a Brooklyn-based commercial real estate dealmaker through Dweck Group, sourcing acquisition opportunities across the boroughs. According to The Real Deal, he and his family — including his parents, Isaac Dweck and Marlene Dweck, who are named in some of the complaints — are part of Brooklyn's tight-knit Syrian Jewish business community, where many of the alleged investor relationships originated. His attorney in a number of the disputed transactions, Jacques Erdos of Erdos Law, is also named as a defendant in at least one of the suits. A lawyer for Erdos told The Real Deal that Erdos disputes the claims against him and denies wrongdoing.
A Cluster Of Lawsuits Across The Boroughs
The first wave landed in December, when five companies, led by Patriarch President Capital, filed a single complaint alleging roughly $2.8 million in losses tied to three deals: 1526 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and 4188 and 4910 Broadway in Manhattan. The plaintiffs describe a similar arc on each — investors wired acquisition funds, expected a closing, and instead allege the money was diverted, accompanied in some filings by what the complaint characterizes as forged or fabricated documents. The 1526 Grand Concourse parcel is a 16,500-square-foot commercial property in Mount Eden that, according to Commercial Observer, is now the subject of separate plans by Leo Brody's ZLB Holdings to build a 99-unit residential project on the site — an indication of the kind of acquisition-and-development play the Patriarch plaintiffs say they were promised. Bert "Ike" Dweck has denied the allegations in response filings, and his lawyer declined to comment to TRD.
Bronx Supermarket Owners, A Co-Defendant With A Federal Record
Two weeks after the Patriarch complaint, Bronx supermarket owners Luis Manuel Diaz and Senelda Diaz — proprietors of a C-Town in Parkchester — sued Bert "Ike" Dweck and a business associate, Mark Benun, for fraud. The Diazes allege the pair represented themselves as agents for the owner of a neighboring building, accepted roughly $1.44 million by wire, then failed to appear at the May 2023 closing; the actual property owner, they say, had no record of payment from them. They describe a parallel pattern on a second deal involving a former Apple Bank branch at 74 Hugh J. Grant Circle in the Bronx, where they allege they sent about $1.37 million into a partnership LLC that, according to the lawsuit, never bought the building and was dissolved by late 2023.
Benun, named as a co-defendant in the Diaz matter, is a familiar figure in Bronx commercial real estate, though not for reasons most investors would welcome. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to four counts of interstate transportation of stolen property in connection with the fraudulent sale of a Bronx commercial building near Yankee Stadium and was sentenced the following year to 51 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $5.5 million, The Real Deal reported at the time; Bronx.com reported he had used forged deed and mortgage documents to sell the building despite owning only a 25 percent interest. That history is separate from the current civil allegations, which Benun's representatives dispute; a spokesperson told TRD that Benun will defend the Diaz claims and has retained counsel after learning of what they characterized as Bert "Ike" Dweck's alleged misconduct.
Bad Checks, Stalled Closings And A $6 Million Lender Claim
A separate lender suit, filed in January by Brooklyn's Gary Porat, alleges Bert "Ike" Dweck owes him nearly $6 million on a series of loans dating to early 2023. The complaint says 130 checks and ACH transfers totaling roughly $5.5 million were returned or bounced between May 24, 2024 and Nov. 19, 2025, and that Bert "Ike" Dweck at one point proposed adding his parents as guarantors to keep credit flowing. Mordechai Samet of Monroe, New York, in a separate suit, alleges about $1.9 million in checks drawn on insufficient, frozen, or — according to his complaint — nonexistent accounts. And Bay Group Development alleges in its complaint that a $500,000 joint-venture deposit on 6401 Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn was never returned, raising the possibility that the funds may have been commingled or misappropriated.
Part Of A Wider Wave Of New York Real Estate Disputes
The Bert "Ike" Dweck filings land in a year when New York commercial real estate has produced an unusual concentration of escrow-misappropriation and investor-fraud cases. Earlier this spring, attorney Mark Nussbaum's former law firms, Nussbaum Lowinger LLP and Mark J. Nussbaum and Associates, filed for Chapter 11 protection with more than $353 million in disputed claims, according to Westfair Online; subsequent filings detailed in a follow-up TRD report describe an alleged Ponzi-style operation in which client escrow money was rerouted into real estate transactions that, in some cases, did not exist. In a separate matter, the New York Attorney General's office announced in January a $4.2 million restitution order against Brooklyn property owner Tom Wu for pocketing escrow deposits from immigrant homebuyer families — another case in which prosecutors said fabricated escrow documentation played a central role. The Bert "Ike" Dweck cases are civil rather than criminal, and the allegations remain unproven, but the procedural toolkit visible in them — promissory notes, personal guarantees, signed confessions of judgment — echoes patterns now familiar from the broader cluster.
What The Civil Cases Could Mean Next
The current suits seek money judgments, the return of deposits and ancillary relief that, depending on the case, could include attachments or liens. The procedural mechanics matter: New York tightened the rules around confessions of judgment in 2019, as McLaughlin & Stern LLP has explained, but lenders still have access to a separate accelerated mechanism — CPLR 3213, which allows summary judgment in lieu of complaint on "an instrument for the payment of money only." That procedure lets a plaintiff skip past pleadings and discovery and head directly to a judgment when the underlying instrument is unambiguous — making it a likely first stop for the lender claims in the Bert "Ike" Dweck cluster. How much that mechanism helps in practice will depend on what discovery surfaces, how the courts treat the signed instruments referenced in the complaints and whether any of the matters settle before they reach a merits ruling.
For now, the lawsuits remain active in New York state court, and the underlying filings are publicly accessible through the state's NYSCEF system. Hoodline will continue to watch the dockets and any public statements from the parties for developments that change the status of the claims.
