An Upper West Side landlord is responding to allegations that he — together with an alleged business partner — spied on a young woman at his building at 7 West 82nd Street through hidden cameras.
Through an emailed statement from his laywer on Thursday afternoon, Michel Kadoe — one of the two defendants named in the suit — denied the allegations made against him, which included gathering at least 70 videos with hidden cameras of the tenant involved in private acts in her bedroom and bathroom. Earlier this month, Aksana Kuzmitskaya, a student from Belarus, filed a suit against Kadoe and Eli Kadoch, who she claimed were both her former employers and landlords.
Kuzmitskaya was hired in 2013 by 7 West 82nd Street LLC to maintain and clean apartments in the nine-unit brownstone building, according to the suit. She moved into her unit in December 2013 after she was urged to do so by her bosses, the suit alleges. The suit stated that Kadoch and Kadoe had the keys to her apartment and entered it on multiple occasions. In July, the woman found a hidden camera in a digital clock, with a usb stick filled with naked pictures of her.
On October 31, a New York County grand jury indicted Kadoch on ten felony counts for the unlawful recordings.
But in a statement today, Kadoe’s lawyer Alexander Tuttle said that Kuzmitskaya’s allegations were false and that she never lived at the building for free. “She was paid by check by 7 West 82 LLC for cleaning services,” Tuttle said in the statement, “but not in exchange for free lodging.”
Kadoe is also disassociating himself from Kadoch by saying that the latter was only a tenant at 7 West 82nd Street, rather than an owner or manager. Tuttle claimed that no evidence was found to prove that images of Kuzmitskaya were sent to Kadoe’s computer.
“Ms. Kuzmitskaya was a temporary guest of Eli Kadoch in his apartment,” the lawyer said in the emailed statement, and pointed to a statement from NYPD officer Francis Brennan in court documents in which he said that Kuzmitskaya told him that she shared a bathroom with Kadoch.
He added that though Kadoe was “cleared of any wrongdoing by the police,” he “remains sullied in the court of public opinion.”