Hartsdale house at center of alleged family fraud

An estate administrator has accused her father of forging her mother’s signature on the deed to their house, with the help of an attorney, to gain control of the Hartsdale property before he died.

Rebekah Altieri claims that her father, Gerard Altieri, and Scarsdale attorney David A. Pravda committed fraud, in a complaint filed Oct. 28 in Westchester Supreme Court.

She is asking the court to set aside the alleged fraudulent deed so she can sell the property.

The house at 35 Highridge Road is worth $1.3 million to $1.6 million, according to a Zillow.com estimate, and is next to the Scarsdale Country Club golf course.

Rebekah’s mother, Antoinette, owned the house but in January 2021, according to the complaint and a county property record, she deeded the property to herself and her husband Gerard as joint tenants.

Nearly six months later, Antoinette died and did not leave a will. The following month, according to a county property record, Gerard deeded the property to himself as sole survivor.

Six months later, Gerard died and did not leave a will.

Rebekah claims that the January 2021 deed is fraudulent because her mother was terminally ill, did not appear before Pravda and did not sign the document. Instead, she says, her father hired Pravda to prepare the deed, her father forged her mother’s signature and Pravda notarized the document as if Antoinette had appeared before him.

As a result, the complaint states, Rebekah, as administer of Antoinette’s estate, cannot dispose of the Hartsdale property unless the court cancels the deed. She is also asking for unspecified damages against her father’s estate and Pravda.

The complaint appears to pit Rebekah against her siblings. She is listed as an inheritor of Antoinette’s estate but it does not say if any of her siblings also are inheritors. It lists three of her siblings as inheritors of Gerard’s estate and does not include Rebekah.

Pravda has practiced law off and on for 56 years.

In 1979, the state First Appellate Division censured Pravda, and in 1983 it suspended him from the practice of law for two years. In 2017, the Second Appellate Division censured him.

In the 2017 action, the attorney grievance committee charged him with professional misconduct for mishandling two estates.  Pravda did not deny the allegations but he apologized profusely.

“It’s very disturbing to me and as I said does not meet my own personal standards,” he told the grievance committee. “And this is a very, very troubling thing to me, not really having a grip on why, why it has gone on in this fashion.”

In concluding that a public censure was the appropriate sanction, the panel of five appellate justices noted Pravda’s candor and sincere contrition, his cooperation, his volunteer and community activities, his advanced age, “and the fact that he has begun to wind down his practice in anticipation of retirement.”

Pravda was in court and not available to respond to the Altieri allegations, his law office said, when called for his side of the story.