“Life’s a risky business,” Bernie Rubin of Rubin Montgomery Real Estate would tell his low income clients, according to a script presented in court. Rubin drafted the script, Community Legal Services attorney Irv Acklesberg said, in order to evade questions about the $600 retainers his company charged prospective home buyers, even if the house deal fell through.
In an order entered last week, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Stephen E. Levin reminded Rubin that such a practice can be risky business, awarding almost $2.6 million to a class of 1,574 people taken in by Rubin’s scheme.
