Ved Parkash has ticked most of the boxes on the bad-landlord bingo card.
He took the top spot on the public advocate’s worst landlord list in 2015 by racking up 2,200 open housing violations. In 2016 he was sued by 38 tenants for allowing violations to run rampant at 750 Grand Concourse. The next year, several tenants in the rodent-infested building came down with rat-borne diseases, and one died.
In 2017, there was Section 8 discrimination. In 2019, he topped a worst-evictors list. And earlier this year Parkash was fined $100,000 for cramming extra units into his buildings.
And yet, Parkash’s latest alleged transgression is a novel one.
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On Monday — coincidentally the landlord’s 77th birthday — a superintendent who had worked for Parkash filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan accusing him of wage theft.
The complaint, brought by Delfino Adan Diaz, says Parkash refused to pay employees time and a half for overtime, a violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law, and failed to provide his workers with pay stubs as required by the Wage Theft Prevention Act.
Diaz claimed he regularly worked 98-hour weeks for Parkash, from 2012 and until Diaz suffered a stroke in June 2020.
The superintendent alleges he was on the clock from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m seven days a week. His compensation, supplemented by housing, averaged $430 a week during the period, or $4.39 an hour, his lawsuit claims.
The suit seeks class-action status to include anyone employed by Parkash since July 20, 2018, and not paid overtime. It seeks overtime pay, damages, interest and attorneys fees. Parkash employs at least 50 people, according to the suit.
Diaz’s attorney, Michael Samuel, did not respond to a request for comment. Parkash, who has historically dodged allegations, could not be reached for comment.
“You can call me a good landlord, you can call me a slum landlord, it’s up to you,” Parkash told ABC7 New York in 2017.