A jilted heir to the fallen Barneys luxury dynasty has accused his late mother and siblings of orchestrating an elaborate tax fraud scheme that allegedly cheated New York state out of $20 million, The Post has learned.
Bob Pressman – the 71-year-old grandson of Barney Pressman, who founded the now-defunct retail icon in 1923 – alleges in an explosive lawsuit that his family conspired to avoid New York state income and estate taxes by falsely claiming that his mother Phyllis Pressman resided in West Palm Beach, Fla.
In fact, the widow of retail legend Fred Pressman – who famously transformed his father Barney’s men’s suit business into a luxury empire in the 1960s – had been living year-round in her oceanfront mansion in Southampton, NY for the last six years of her life, the suit claims.
“Phyllis Pressman freely told the people around her that she did not like Florida and did not intend to make it her permanent home,” the complaint alleges.
The estate of Phyllis Pressman – who died last year at 95 and who, according to the suit, “was renowned for her exacting and highly developed taste and sophistication” – is said to be worth upwards of $100 million, according to a source close to the case.
That includes the 2.3-acre, oceanfront spread at 346 Meadow Ln. in Southampton that’s currently on the block for $38.5 million. Her swanky Upper East Side apartment, listed for $3.95 million, is in contract.
Some of the late matriarch’s jewelry and artwork also are slated for auction this fall by Freeman’s-Hindman. They will include pieces from Bulgari, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels; and paintings by American artists Frederick Carl Frieseke, Edward Henry Potthast, William Merrett Chase and Robert Reid.
As exclusively reported by The Post. Bob Pressman had previously worked on an as-yet unpublished manuscript for an incendiary tell-all book that blamed his family for Barney’s demise.
Pressman was cut out of his mother’s will after years of family squabbling, capped by his refusal to participate in the alleged tax fraud, according to a source close to the case. A trust agreement drawn up by Phyllis’s attorneys declared, “Bob doesn’t get anything for reasons he well knows,” a source close to the case told The Post.
Bob’s sisters Elizabeth and Nancy, who were buyers for Barneys, sued him several years after the retailer’s 1996 bankruptcy, accusing him of cheating them out of $30 million from the business. Bob, who was in charge of the company’s finances at the time, denied the allegations.
“The Pressman sisters are trying to reinvent issues that have been thoroughly reviewed, and resolved or dismissed in conjunction with the Barneys Inc. Chapter 11 case confirmed by the bankruptcy court over six months ago,” Bob Pressman said in a statement at the time. “They simply do not like that result,” he added.
A New York judge awarded the sisters $11.3 million in 2002. Their brother appealed the award.
Meanwhile, Bob’s tell-all manuscript accuses his brother Eugene Pressman – better known as Gene – of running Barneys into the ground with lavish spending projects, even as he allegedly spent his time partying through the 1980s at Studio 54.
At the time, Gene fired back, accusing his brother of having “a casual relationship with the truth” and claiming “Bob conveniently forgets he was in fact the co-CEO responsible for the financial stability of firm, a role in which by all measures he massively failed.”
The book proposal, by contrast, claims that Bob “argued with his family all the time when the Barneys New York Madison Avenue store was being built,” protesting the massive tab that was being run up.
Bob’s new lawsuit – which is only coming to light now after a judge unsealed it last week – claims that the allegedly tax-cheating members of the Pressman family could be liable for upwards of $50 million in back taxes and penalties.
An amended complaint filed in New York state Supreme Court in September lists Bob Pressman as a whistleblower under the New York False Claims Act, which could entitle him up to 30% of any recovery. He filed his original complaint last July.
According to the suit, Phyllis originally moved to West Palm Beach in 2000 – four years after her husband Fred died – when she married her second husband, philanthropist Joseph Gurwin.
Gurwin, whose fortune came from military equipment including gas masks and bulletproof vests, died in 2009. Phyllis continued to live in Palm Beach until 2018, when she moved back to New York full time, according to the suit.
In mid-2021, Phyllis Pressman “successfully recruited” her children Gene, Elizabeth and Nancy to falsely assert that she lived most of the year in Palm Beach” in her estate’s legal documents – after Bob had refused to do so, according to the complaint.
As part of the alleged scheme, Gene, Elizabeth and Nancy in late 2023 – just a few months before Phyllis died – helped move their mother to hospice care in Palm Beach “when she was ill and should not have been traveling,” even as they transferred the Hamptons mansion to a limited liability company, according to the suit.
As a result, the three siblings “all increased the size of their inheritance from Phyllis Pressman because they helped the Estate avoid the New York estate taxes that it was obligated to pay,” the suit claims.
As proof of Phyllis’s New York residency from 2018 on, the complaint alleges that she had her prescriptions filled at a local Southampton pharmacy, regularly used the landline at her oceanfront home, and employed two aides at the house.
Bob Pressman declined to comment on the complaint, as did his sisters Elizabeth and Nancy. Gene Pressman did not respond to a calls and emails requesting comment.
The siblings were notified about the lawsuit within the past couple of weeks, Bob Pressman’s attorney Randall Fox told The Post.
If successful, it would be among the top five such cases brought in New York.
The Empire state has recovered $674 million from deadbeat filers since 2010 when it established the Taxpayer Protection Bureau, of which Fox was the founding bureau chief.
The largest individual settlement under the False Claims Act was for $105 million, which was paid in 2021 by Swedish hedge fund manager Thomas Sandell. He allegedly set up a shell office in Boca Raton, Fla. to avoid paying taxes on his NYC business, according to the New York Attorney General’s office. Sandell did not admit wrongdoing.
