A prominent attorney once dubbed the city’s “Night-Life Lawyer” apparently killed himself outside his parents’ Brooklyn home, police sources said, just a few months after his indictment in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme .
Cops found Salvatore Strazzullo — who represented clients like rapper Foxy Brown and a stripper who sued boxer Oscar de la Hoya — in a car on Bay 13th St. in Bensonhurst at about 3:30 a.m., after a relative called 911, police sources said.
Police believe Strazzullo, 52, died by suicide of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, sources said, though the city medical examiner’s office will determine his cause of death.
Strazzullo was a fixture in tabloid news stories for decades, and a 2012 New York Times feature dubbed him the “Night-Life Lawyer” for his work representing low-level celebrities who get in legal trouble while out on the town.
But last month, a state Attorney Grievance Committee ordered him disbarred, acting on two “established” complaints of professional misconduct — one alleging he misappropriated client funds, the other that he failed to cooperate with an investigation, public records show.
He represented Ex-Scores stripper Milana Dravnel in a 2008 lawsuit against de la Hoya that hinged on the authenticity of photos of the boxing champ in fishnets and a tutu.
He also repped former bikini bar investor Adam Hock, who punched Prince Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco, Grace Kelly’s grandson, during a Feb. 12, 2012, melee at Double Seven in the Meatpacking District. Hock got 10 days of community service after pleading to disorderly conduct.
Strazzullo also counted Foxy Brown as a client, when the rapper was accused of violating an order of protection by mooning her neighbor in 2010, three years after she was convicted of beaning the woman with a Blackberry. The neighbor refused to testify in 2011, and the charges were dropped.
His fortunes turned, though, and he was hit with a pair of indictments in Brooklyn Supreme Court in December and April, accused of stealing more than $5 million from several real estate clients.
Strazzullo used his clients’ money in his escrow account from June 2021 to this past March after they made seven-figure home sales, and took money from new clients to pay off older ones, prosecutors allege.
He spent $50,000 at restaurants like Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, Cipriani and Ponte Vecchio; nearly $100,000 for a BMW and a driver; about $60,000 for hotels in Paris and Miami, and about $406,000 for a $13,000-a-month apartment in Battery Park City, prosecutors allege.
According to prosecutors, he stole nearly $1.3 million from an 86-year-old man and an 81-year-old woman after they sold their Bensonhurst family home, never giving them the money when it went into his escrow account then stopped returning their calls and emails, prosecutors allege.
He did the same in several other home sales, prosecutors said.
He was accused of stealing more than $933,000 from a 90-year-old man and an 88-year-old woman who sold their Kensington home for $1.6 million, and of fleecing another family out of almost $700,000 in two separate home sales in Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights.
Last May, he represented a 75-year-old man as executor of his cousin’s estate, and swiped more than $870,000 worth of the $1.9 million from selling the cousin’s Borough Park home, prosecutors allege.
His lawyer declined comment Tuesday.
Source Agencies
