New York Post: Wheelchair-bound man who sues inaccessible shops can walk

By: Julia Marsh, Kevin Sheehan and Ruth Brown

Busted!

A wheelchair-using Queens man who’s been shaking down businesses by threatening to sue for millions over their lack of handicapped access — if they don’t pay him first — was walking just fine when The Post visited him this week.

“Please, take out! I don’t want pictures!” a panicked-looking Arik Matatov said while walking backward into his apartment when a Post reporter showed up at his door.

Matatov, 24, has been making $50,000 demands of dozens of Manhattan businesses that aren’t wheelchair accessible and pocketing the cash — or suing them for $5 million if they don’t cough it up.

In one case, he claimed he would be “humiliated” to accept an employee’s help up a few steps into the tween clothing store Journeys.

Yet when The Post rang Matatov’s Rego Park doorbell Tuesday and a woman called him to the door, he walked over on his own and then stood there without assistance.

When the reporter identified himself and asked Matatov if he uses a wheelchair, Matatov made his plea for no photos and the woman then slammed the door.

A few minutes later, he lumbered out of the building and walked to a pal’s Lexus waiting 40 feet away — which he entered as the friend held the door open.

The men drove to a local Jewish community center, where Matatov exited the car and unfurled a blind walking cane.

He then walked off using the cane to feel his way — but not for support — while the buddy held his arm.

The serial litigant’s attorney, who has helped him send threatening letters to nearly 50 businesses in the past few months, claimed he had no idea about his client’s ambulatory abilities — and that he doesn’t even “know him personally.”

“Oh, wow,” said lawyer Jeffrey Neiman when told what The Post saw.

“I don’t know anything about that. Really, I had no idea.

“[Matatov] said he usually needs a wheelchair but he didn’t comment in terms of when he needed it. I didn’t have reason to question him someone in a wheelchair, you know?” he continued.

“I’ll definitely look into it. I don’t do those things, fake lawsuits, I’m not into it.”

He confirmed Matatov does have trouble seeing, although Neiman couldn’t say why.

When asked if he knew why Matatov even needs a wheelchair, Neiman said, “Specifically, no. I’ll probably follow up with him at some point.”

News of Matatov’s sudden mobility angered the businesses he has targeted.

“Wow, that’s amazing — I mean it’s terrible,” said attorney Philip Pizzuto, who is representing Broome Street’s Caffe Roma in a legal battle with Matatov.

“As an attorney, you hear about these things, but it’s sad.”

Others weren’t exactly shocked.

“It’s a scam and we knew it when we first got the letter,” said Barbara Di Palo, whose family restaurant Brooks 1890 received one of the letters a month ago.

“It costs $5,000 to hire a lawyer, so they think you’ll just pay them off. I’m happy you’re exposing him. I applaud that. And hopefully they’ll stop harassing small businesses.”

A worker at men’s clothing store Ari in Soho — which Matatov threatened after finding its portable ramp was too small for his chair to get up two steps — said he hopes there are consequences.

“These people should be prosecuted for hurting businesses for no reason. There is no merit to this case,” said the employee, who wouldn’t give his name.

“That lawyer should be barred from practicing law,” he added.

Tom Stebbins of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, which is working to eliminate nuisance suits, said the scheme makes “a mockery of the legal profession and the civil justice system.”

“The New York attorney general and the Department of Justice should keep a close eye on these serial filers — in both state and federal courts — and the lawyers at the lawsuit mills that recruit them,” he said.

“The fraud and abuse in this system must be stopped so these laws can be returned to their noble intentions,” he said.

Neiman and Matatov wouldn’t be the first people accused of gaming the Americans with Disabilities Act with dozens of suits.

Florida paraplegic Lawrence Feltzin filed more than 50 suits against Big Apple businesses from 2014 through 2016, according to Legal Newsline.

Feltzin’s lawyer, Lawrence Fuller, was previously sanctioned by a Florida federal judge in 2003 for filing more than a dozen suits on behalf of a man he claimed to be a quadriplegic — who then walked into the courtroom.

“[The client] did not know what a quadriplegic was, and when the term was explained to him, he was repulsed by the thought of being so incapacitated and surprised that he had been thought to be so,” the judge wrote in his rebuke.