Yaron HershcoFrom the January issue: Ruthleona Clement — a black pharmaceutical auditor with a soft-spoken, professional demeanor — sat awkwardly across the table from four white lawyers wearing expensive suits and glimmering watches in a Brooklyn U.S. District courtroom last November.
Unable to afford an attorney, Clement, 31, is representing herself in a lawsuit against all of their clients — chiefly United Homes, most known as a pioneering luxury developer in Downtown Brooklyn. The suit alleges that United Homes’ owner, Yaron “Ron” Hershco, along with her lenders, appraisers and attorney, operated a “one-stop” shop that Clement claims preyed on her ethnicity and inexperience to defraud her into buying an overpriced, lemon home in Far Rockaway, Queens. [more]
