{"id":4736,"date":"2009-04-22T08:50:55","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=4736"},"modified":"2009-04-22T08:50:55","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T13:50:55","slug":"let_me_strap_you_into_the_restaulounge_so_we_can_waterboard_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/04\/let_me_strap_you_into_the_restaulounge_so_we_can_waterboard_you.html","title":{"rendered":"Let Me Strap You Into The Restaulounge So We Can Waterboard You"},"content":{"rendered":"

But in the end, threatening to torture your landlord can only get you so far<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Manhattan prosecutors described yesterday how two Greenwich Village restaurateurs allegedly set the stage for extortion this past January — kidnapping their landlord’s agent, taking him to a nearby apartment, and showing him some hardware decidedly not meant for a home-improvement project, they said. <\/p>\n

The unidentified victim took one look at the tarp and the wicker chair on it — alongside a table full of sinister-seeming tools — and agreed to forgive $250,000 in back rent, prosecutors said. <\/p>\n

“They showed him a chair, placed on top of a tarp with a table holding pliers, a hammer, a screwdriver, and a candle,” said prosecutor James Meadows. “A burning candle.” <\/p>\n

It hadn’t helped that one of the suspects, Vasileios Giamagas, 35, bragged he was a former mercenary and an accomplished killer who’d slain his own brother. <\/p>\n

“He told the managing agent that he was in the Chechen army and had blown up a building with more than 80 people in it,” said Eric Seidel, chief of the DA’s rackets bureau. <\/p>\n

Giamagas, an illegal alien from Greece, and co-defendant Ekkehart Schwartz, a 70-year-old German architect here on a green card, had fallen behind on their rent at their never-opened bar and nightclub, Restaulounge-Bar De’Vill, at 68 W. 3rd St.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But in the end, threatening to torture your landlord can only get you so far: Manhattan prosecutors described yesterday how two Greenwich Village restaurateurs allegedly set the stage for extortion this past January — kidnapping their landlord’s agent, taking him to a nearby apartment, and showing him some hardware decidedly not meant for a home-improvement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just_horrible","category-law_order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4737,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4736\/revisions\/4737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}