Gellers

With breathtaking chutzpah, the city's most notorious landlords, described by a city solicitor as "grown-up guys who play Monopoly," took money from people as down payments on property the father-and-son team didn't own. Morris Geller, 67, and his son, Joel, 44, of the Morris B. Geller & Son real estate business in Northeast Philadelphia, admitted in Common Pleas Court yesterday to nine counts of theft and one count of conspiracy in connection with...

Morris B. and Joel S. Geller, a father-and-son real estate team facing two sets of criminal charges in connection with business practices, have been prohibited by court order from bidding on any property being auctioned at city sheriff's sales. The court order, signed by Common Pleas Court Judge Samuel M. Lehrer on Tuesday and read by Sheriff John D. Green at yesterday's sheriff's sale at the Civic Center, forbids the Gellers from attending further sheriff's sales or attempting to buy properties through other agents.

Tenants of properties held by the real estate team of Morris and Joel Geller don't have to pay their rent for now, a Common Pleas court judge has ruled. Instead, the tenants will probably have to put their rent money into escrow accounts that will eventually go to pay the Geller's back taxes and huge fines owed to the city for housing code violations. The Gellers have been charged with bribing city officials to wipe out tax and code violation liens from their properties. They're also charged with making payoffs to a city employee to get advance information on upcoming sheriff's sales.

Northeast Philadelphia real estate dealers Morris and Joel Geller were held for trial yesterday on theft charges in connection with six alleged phony transactions. At the same time, Municipal Court Judge J. Earl Simmons Jr. dismissed racketeering and perjury charges against the father-and-son real estate partnership. Simmons also dismissed several charges that the Gellers had attempted to fraudulently collect rent from poor tenants. Simmons made the rulings at a preliminary hearing in connection with a 27- count complaint the District Attorney's Office filed against the Gellers in May. Assistant District Attorney Steven Hyman said his office is considering rearresting the Gellers on the racketeering charge, which accuses them of a pattern of illegal activity over the last five years.

After groping only partway through the tangled web of business dealings by Morris and Joel Geller, the city has filed suit seeking more than $10 million in fines from the father-and-son real-estate team. Deputy City Solicitor Andrew Bralow said the penalty was by far the largest ever sought and "breaks the record by factors of a hundred. " The suit was filed yesterday in Common Pleas Court. A hearing is scheduled in late April, Bralow said. The bulk of the money, more than $9 million in fines, is for failure to file various business tax and wage tax returns, in some cases as far back as 1974, Bralow said.

Henry Moore was relieved to learn that Morris and Joel Geller had been arrested yesterday for allegedly operating a real estate scam. "Thank you," Moore said when informed by a reporter that the Gellers had been charged with collecting rent on apartments they had no interest in and for selling houses they didn't own. Moore is one of 14 individuals victimized by the Gellers, according to Assistant District Attorney Steven Hyman. Hyman said the Gellers tried to sell Moore a house that was owned by the city.

Morris and Joel Geller, a father-and-son real estate team, sold a house for $2,000 that they knew was going to be snatched from the buyers at a sheriff's sale a month later, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday. "In my 12 years defending people who have been victimized by shady real estate deals, I've never seen anything as shocking as what the Gellers do," said Irv Ackelsberg, an attorney with Community Legal Services, who filed the suit against the pair. The suit said the Geller business, M.B. Geller and Son, at Fairfield Street and Willits Road in the Far Northeast, is designed to defraud other people in similar ways.

Northeast Philadelphia real estate dealers Morris and Joel Geller were arrested yesterday and charged by the District Attorney's Office with using their business, M.B. Geller & Son, as a racketeering enterprise. The complaint charged that the Gellers repeatedly engaged in fraud in the sale of property during the last five years and demanded rent at properties where they were not authorized rental agents. County detectives arrested the Gellers at 9:30 a.m. at their office in the 3100 block of Fairfield Street, according to Assistant District Attorney Steven Hyman, who is assigned to prosecute the case.

In a case described as one of the longest and most complex ever conducted by the state Real Estate Commission, the commission has revoked the licenses of Philadelphia real estate agents Morris and Joel Geller, saying they mismanaged about $57,000 worth of clients' funds. The commission's action, effective Aug. 21 and announced this week, means that they cannot buy or sell real estate or act as property managers for clients. The Gellers, who operate Geller and Son, at 3142 Fairfield St., have 30 days to appeal the decision.

Joel S. Geller was not above a little bragging when he chatted with a city official he allegedly bribed with eight checks of $500 each, officials said. Geller, arrested yesterday on racketeering and bribery charges, told Myer Budman, the sheriff's sale coordinator in the Office of Housing and Community Development and the alleged recipient of $4,000 in bribes, "You're going to become the Donald Trump of Philadelphia. " Geller's comments were recorded in a court-approved wiretap conducted by District Attorney Ronald Castille's investigators.

Midway through the second set of his match against Moorestown's Marc Hill, Cherry Hill East's Jason Geller wanted to know what the team score was. When Ralph Ipri, the East tennis coach, told him it was 2-2, all Geller could do was laugh. "This always seems to happen to me," he said. So Geller did what he had been doing all season for the Cougars. He won. Geller knocked off Hill, 6-4, 7-5, to give East, ranked No. 1 in South Jersey by The Inquirer, a 3-2 victory over the second-ranked Quakers for the championship of the Moorestown Classic at Moorestown High School yesterday.

After getting mowed down by Cherry Hill East yesterday, the Lenape boys' tennis team found little consolation in its performance. But Indians coach Rodger Carney latched on to what solace he could. "It can only go up from here," he said. Lenape's status as one of South Jersey's top teams didn't go very far against the Cougars. In the first match of the season for both teams, Cherry Hill East earned a 5-0 decision and again prevented the Indians from gaining their first-ever win against the South Jersey tennis giant.

Cherry Hill East and Shawnee were tied, 2-2, with only the No. 1 singles match undecided yesterday. For East to avenge its loss to Shawnee in last year's South Jersey Group 4 boys' tennis championship, Jason Geller would have to hold on to beat Curt Melvin. Geller had won a first-set tiebreaker but trailed, 3-2, in the second set. But knowing that the title was his to win or lose didn't faze Geller. It didn't faze him because he didn't know. "It's a good thing I didn't know it was tied 2-all or maybe I would have played differently," Geller said.

A year ago, Cherry Hill East's Jason Geller wasn't sure if he wanted to be the No. 1 singles player for the four-time defending state Group 4 champions. This season, the sophomore is positive he belongs in the No. 1 position for coach Ralph Ipri's Cougars. "Last year, there were times I wanted to play at No. 1 and other times when I thought I didn't," said Geller, who moved up to first singles this season after winning 23 of 25 matches at third singles as a freshman. "I really didn't know what it would be like at No. 1 and I didn't mind playing at No. 3, because I felt the team didn't have to depend on me winning all the time.

The road along which a nice Jewish boy from a strictly kosher family in London winds up as a pig farmer in Yorkshire is necessarily one with more twists and turns than a barrel of pretzels. And you would certainly have to journey a long way to find a head-on cultural and dynastic collision of greater comic impact than the close encounter of the Gellers of St. John's Wood in North London and the Chadwicks of the hamlet of Lower Dinthorpe (not to be confused with Lower Middle Dinthorpe, several miles to the south)

It's bottom of the third, bases loaded. Behind right field the sun is setting. Ed Phelan, 74, pitches a high lob over the plate, and Bob Carroll, 55, smacks it - tinng! - high into center field. With that, 61-year-old John Mahan takes off from third the way he's done it since he was a kid: He sprints down the baseline toward home. "Other one! Other one!" his teammates holler from the sideline. "Over there! Over there!" But it's just noise to Mahan, who pump-pump-pumps his arms faster in his rush toward home.

Morris and Joel Geller, father and son, are the sort of predators who you'd have thought went out with Dickens. Alas, they did not and have been running a modern-day slumlord operation out of Northeast Philadelphia, bilking the weak and uneducated, shredding even the real estate business's flexible code of ethics and, according to the City Solicitor's office, dodging thousands of dollars of taxes on unsafe, dilapidated properties. The irrepressible Gellers continued "ripping people off" even after their arrest last year, the DA's office complained at a sentencing hearing this week.

Philadelphia real estate dealers Morris B. and Joel S. Geller were each sentenced to three to nine years in prison yesterday and ordered to pay restitution to eight clients whom they bilked in phony property sales. Noting that the father-and-son partners preyed on the poor and uneducated in making bogus home sales, Common Pleas Court Judge Norman Ackerman told the Gellers: "People placed their confidence in you. People placed their trust in you. . . . Life savings were entrusted with you. You betrayed their trust.

Joel Geller, 44, knew he was about to be sent to jail for ripping off the poor in a real estate scam, so he asked the judge to show mercy to his 67- year-old father. "My father is virtually an innocent man," said Geller yesterday. "I was the inside man. I ran things from inside the office. All my father did was go out on the street and collect rents. I feel probation (for his father) would be greatly appreciated. " But Common Pleas Judge Norman Ackerman said he felt the father, Morris Geller, was just as guilty as his son in the "inexcusable and reprehensible" fraud.

In April, Common Pleas Judge Norman Ackerman allowed Morris Geller, 67, and his son, Joel, 44, to remain free on bail while awaiting sentencing on June 26 on their guilty pleas to taking money from people as down payments on property they didn't own. Yesterday, the judge revoked Joel Geller's bail and committed him to prison for violating an order that he quit the real estate business. Assistant District Attorney Steven Hyman had asked for a similar action against Morris Geller, but because the older Geller is suffering from a serious foot injury, he wasn't in court.