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City Slaps Innocent Old Man With Big Fines Over Fliers
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 18, 2011
Modified Apr 18, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 18, 2011
Modified Apr 18, 2011
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Today's tale of Kafkaesque bureaucratic absurdity comes to us courtesy of the NY Post, which finds a kindly old insurance salesman who faces $48,000 in fines for putting up fliers advertising a moving company. Not his moving company, of course, but a company that advertised its services with a phone number traced to him by the city's flier police. Levy Zelishovsky, 72, says, "All my life, I'm in the insurance business. I'm a senior citizen, and I can hardly move myself." Yet somehow the Department of Sanitation sent him 643 in summonses totaling more than $48,000 in fines.
How did this happen? The enforcers at the Sanitation Department did a reverse phone number search for the digits on the fliers, which led them to Zelishovsky. The Department says the phone number on the fliers was an old landline number that Zelishovsky had not used since 2006. Meanwhile, the company, Low Cost Relocation Moving Co., has since gone out of business—which isn't really surprising. Pro business tip: when advertising your services, double check to make sure the phone number is yours, not an elderly insurance salesman.
Zelishovsky, for his part, tells the Post he's had the same phone number for 25 years and that he never owned the phone number on the flier. At the end of the month he'll go before an Environmental Control Board, and the Sanitation Department will recommend the fines be dismissed. But will there ever be justice for victims who suffered from the brutal illegal advertising of Low Cost Relocation Moving?!
Tagged
fliers
kafka
reverse lookup
sanitation department
the law
the trial
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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