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The owner of the Brooklyn building that collapsed onto an adjacent construction site leaving eight people dead is not only a notorious slumlord — he’s also a deadbeat who owes more than $450,000 in fines, unpaid taxes and water bills, The Post has learned.
Olufemi Falade — who has the dubious distinction of landing on the NYC public advocate’s annual “Worst Landlords Watchlist” three times — racked up nearly all of his debt at the three-story building at 1321 Flatbush Ave. that crumbled Wednesday.
A review of city records found that he owes $170,000 in fines issued by the Department of Buildings in 2019 for improperly displayed signs. He also owes the city $114,945 in unpaid water bills accumulated over several years and $113,526 in property taxes dating to 2021.
Separately, Falade owes the Internal Revenue Service another $49,269 for unpaid personal federal income taxes, according to a 2010 lien. He also owes New York state another $4,316 in personal income taxes.
The city is still trying to determine who is at fault for the building collapse.
The city signed off on deep excavation plans for the construction site that likely caused the collapse — even though it lacked key structural support, The Post previously reported.
The DOB approved the allegedly shoddy plans in March for the excavation of the lot at 2625 Bedford Ave, where a developer was set to build a three-floor, 25,000-square-foot mixed-use building.
Records show the plans provided extensive and sophisticated shoring and bracing along the majority of the lot, including the backyard of 1321 Flatbush Ave. — but the blueprints crucially did not include any hard reinforcements right alongside the now-collapsed building.
Besides making the Worst Landlord’s List, Falade was sentenced to 12 days in jail in 2006 and fined another $50,000 for civil contempt for failing to fix more than 1,800 violations — including vermin infestations, exposed wires and leaking pipes — at 12 Brooklyn buildings he then owned.
The Flatbush Avenue building had 98 open violations with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development before it collapsed, including violations for a leaky roof, defective doors, bedbug infestations and exposed wiring, according to HPD records.
The leaky roof violations date as far back as 1976 and continued being issued through earlier this year.
Falade purchased the 96-year-old building in 1999 for an undisclosed price under the entity “Femi Realty Corp,” city property records show. In November 2024, he transferred ownership to another entity he controls, “Isolag Realty Corp,” signing off on the deed as both the seller and buyer with no money exchanged.
Shifting properties between shell companies to evade fines and taxes is common among rogue landlords, but it doesn’t absolve them of debt, according to legal experts.
Massimo D’Angelo, a longtime real estate attorney with Blank Rome, said HPD and the Department of Buildings need to do a better job sharing their files when it comes to safety violations to help boost enforcement.
“There has to be unity between HPD and DOB files, and particularly for structural oversight violations,” D’Angelo said.
“This guy was rotting in jail for 12 days and it didn’t cure the problem. The city’s remedies are too slow.”
Falade did not return messages.
