N.Y. Landlord Admits Hiring Hit Man

Talk about your heartless landlords.

Alvin Weiss pleaded guilty Wednesday to hiring a hit man to kill two
of his tenants who had complained about conditions in their
apartments. Weiss also admitted planning to set fire to one of their
apartments.

In two other separate cases, Weiss also pleaded guilty Wednesday to
forging a will that made him the beneficiary of his insurance broker's
$400,000 estate and to tax fraud.

Weiss' tenants were not harmed after the hit man revealed the plot to
police.

Prosecutors portrayed Weiss, 46, as the ultimate slumlord, living in a
$2 million home in Brooklyn while denying basic services to tenants
living in the nearly 30 buildings he owns on Manhattan's Lower East
Side. Some of Weiss' tenants, however, defended him after his arrest.

Weiss faces up to 14 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 18 on
the murder plot charges. He admitted bailing Eduardo Almestica out of
jail in the summer of 1997 and paying him $4,000 to kill Brigette Marx
and Burnell Crawford, who lived in two of his rent-controlled
apartments, by giving them fatal doses of heroin.

When a tenant leaves a rent controlled apartment, the landlord is
allowed by law to raise the rent charged to the next tenant.

The murder plots went awry when Almestica was nailed by police with
the heroin. He revealed the plot and agreed to record a damning
conversation with Weiss after police faked Ms. Marx's death.

When Weiss was arrested, police found passports, bank books,
securities statements, tax returns, driver's licenses and credit cards
with different aliases. They also found several guns, boxes of
ammunition and some $14,000 in cash.

In a second, separate case before another judge, Weiss admitted he
perjured himself in order to cover up a bogus will scam.

Weiss said he and two others were witnesses to the 1994 signing of the
will of Abraham Thau, his insurance broker. Thau actually died in 1995
without leaving a will, prosecutors said, and the three men created
one and filed it after his death. Weiss' passport and other documents
show he was in Hungary on the date of the supposed
will-signing.

Weiss will be sentenced to up to one year in that case.

In a third case before a third judge, Weiss pleaded guilty to tax
fraud and agreed to pay almost $700,000 in back taxes, fines and other
penalties.