Melinda Katz
Queens borough president candidate Melinda Katz and her partner, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, allegedly scammed one of Sliwa’s ex-wives out of about $400,000 to build a nest egg for them and their two sons as they carried out an extramarital affair, according to a $1.4 million lawsuit filed last week in Manhattan federal court.
Sliwa’s ex-wife, Mary Sliwa, alleges in the suit that the CEO of the Guardian Angels, a nonprofit and volunteer organization of unarmed citizen crime patrollers, had a longstanding “secret, personal and intimate relationship” with Katz, a former Democratic councilwoman from Forest Hills, from which two sons were born through in vitro fertilization. The plaintiff calls Curtis Sliwa an “inveterate, world-class liar” who allegedly funneled about $8,000 a month – $96,000 a year – in child support payments to Katz in order to have a financial cushion on which he and Katz could land after he divorced Mary Sliwa in 2012.
A Katz spokesman panned the suit.
“This is a sad, frivolous lawsuit,” Katz spokesman George Arzt said in an emailed statement. “Unfortunately, it is an attempt to use a political campaign and false innuendo as leverage to publicly rehash a long ago settled divorce. Given the personal and family nature of the situation, we won’t be commenting further.”
Curtis Silwa
The suit details a series of specific occasions on which the ex-wife alleges that Curtis Sliwa lied to her to be with Katz, including telling her he was too tired after sports games and needed to spend the night at the Empire State Building – from where he broadcasts his twice-daily radio show. Instead, Mary Sliwa alleges her ex-husband, with whom she has a 9-year-old child with special needs, spent the night at the former legislator’s Forest Hills home.
After Katz became pregnant for the first time in 2008, Mary Sliwa alleges that her now ex-husband and Katz “conspired with each other to drain marital assets so Curtis Sliwa could leave [Mary Sliwa] in due course, join his mistress… and have a ‘nest egg’ of marital assets.’”
Mary Sliwa
“Falsely asserting over and over that there was no relationship between himself and Melinda Katz, and implementing the plan to pilfer, purloin and swindle marital assets, Curtis Sliwa told [Mary Sliwa] that the sperm had been frozen years before and he convinced [his then wife] that they would have to use significant marital assets to pay child support for the Katz child born out of wedlock,” the suit goes on to state.
Mary Sliwa alleges in the suit that her ex-husband actually donated the sperm just prior to each in vitro fertilization procedure.
Curtis Sliwa could not be reached for comment.
The anti-crime activist and Melinda Katz now live together in Forest Hills, according to Katz’s campaign website.
“They are raising their children in the same Forest Hills house Melinda grew up in and her parents purchased more than 50 years ago,” the website states.
