It's been a year exactly since my experience with Ari J. LeFauve and Nikki Adamo at TREGNY, but I feel like people should know what they put me though. I has three separate lawyers working on getting me out of this mess, to no avail. This is why:

Nikki Adamo and Ari LeFauve screwup:

* They told me to pay the landlord $5500 before even seeing the lease. (I have this in emails as well, also suggesting I use credit card if I can't get cash that fast.)

* Nikki Adamo didn't advise me that the deposit of $5500 should NOT be non-refundable since I hadn't even seen the lease yet.

* Ari LeFauve tried to get me to pay their broker fee in advance before even seeing the lease or meeting the landlord. Told me that I can "pay them now or walk away from that apartment."

* Both Ari LeFauve and Nikki Adamo lied and said they read the entire lease, but when I met with Ari to go over it the day before the signing (after they had had it the whole time), he clearly hadn't read ANY of it.

* Then Ari LeFauve and Nikki Adamo told me the lease is fine when in fact the lease is highly abnormal and I can be evicted in 5 days if any guest of mine brings a bicycle in the elevator, for example.

* When I told Ari LeFauve I wasn't comfortable with some of the stuff in the lease (from looking at it with him) and said we need a rider, Ari LeFauve said he'd get his lawyer friend to write something up, but then sent me a few hack sentences that didn't protect me and he clearly wrote in 2 minutes with no thought.

* They didn't advise me to show the lease or the landlord's large custom rider to a lawyer. (Because they didn't want the lawyer to point out any of the issues and delay or keep them from getting their fee.)

* They didn't advise me that I wasn't a certified artist and therefore couldn't legally live there, despite that the last page of the lease talks about being a certified artist, right above where I sign.

* They didn't advise me that a $16, 500. 3 month security fee is highly abnormal (especially on a bare-bones loft, and when I'm paying a year up-front), as is saying in the lease that he can keep all of it if I move out for any reason before 2 years is up.

* They didn't advise me that I shouldn't give a year upfront, or that it would limit my rights and potentially put me in a bad situation with little recourse. Instead they told me I should because it would help me get a better deal, but then didn't negotiate a better deal for me, instead just got it so the landlord insisted on the year upfront.

* They didn't advise me that I should sign the lease in my own name instead of one of my companies names, because signing a company name was not necessary and severely limits my rights, excluding me from normal warranty of hability clauses and residential housing court and laws.

* They didn't advise me that the rider and the lease should both be in the same name (the rider was to my charity and the lease was to my business Inc.)

* Ari LeFauve told me they would charge me 4.5% commission because I was a friend of a friend, and I even sent a text to Ari LeFauve re-confirming that it was 4.5%, who later claimed that he didn't respond and disputed that rate because "he doesn't text" (however, he had texted with me in the past). They didn't even show me the apartment, and they charged me the same commission every other broker offered, and said that I would lose the apartment if I didn't pay it.

* Despite admitting verbally that she (Nikki Adamo) heard the landlord say that upstairs was a quiet office with normal hours, and that we both made it clear that I would be living and working there, they refused to sign anything stating such, unless I first sign something indemnifying them from any responsibility. (Which would suggest that they knew they had done wrong.)