The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organized Acts of 1970, otherwise known as RICO laws, were designed to bring down organized crime syndicates like the mafia. Now, the laws that took down New York mob boss Frank "Funzi" Tieri in 1980 is being used by a tenants association to file federal charges against controversial landlords, the Pinnacle Group, for fraud, harassment, exorbitant rent inflation and illegal evictions.

Backed by what they say is widespread public opinion and the support of elected officials, including Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a tenant group known as Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem (BRUSH) and nine tenants have filed suit through law firm Jenner and Block in Federal District Court in Manhattan against Pinnacle and its owner and founder, Joel Weiner.

Though the group is filing on behalf of Harlem tenants, BRUSH president Kim Powell said they are open to the idea of incorporating any of Pinnacle’s disaffected tenants citywide. Pinnacle and Weiner own and operate more than 420 apartment buildings in the city, including eight local buildings here in the northwest Bronx.

Though the story has been leaked to the press, Pinnacle’s lawyer, Ken Fisher, a former city councilman from Brooklyn, said the company has yet to be served by the court. But based on what he’s read in the papers, he called the charges "utter nonsense."

Since the winter of 2005, the Norwood News has extensively covered Pinnacle’s methods of taking hundreds of Bronx tenants to court and inflating major capital improvement repair costs while receiving financial backing from the Praedium investment group.

Recently, at the Botanical Square building on Webster Avenue, a property owned and operated by Pinnacle, a woman with a baby said the super had locked her out of her apartment for being a few days late on rent. Others in the building complained of leaky faucets and ceilings, broken windows and other problems that are rarely attended to.

Powell said its all part of Praedium and Pinnacle’s plan to swallow up buildings, make mostly cosmetic renovations while leaving tenants waiting for basic repairs, force out long-time residents and jack up rents.

In West Harlem, Powell has been fighting Pinnacle and Weiner for almost a decade. But it was only in the last few years, when Pinnacle "mushroomed" into a huge real estate entity citywide that she realized the widespread problems that tenants in Pinnacle buildings were having.

After a couple of successful housing seminars in 2005, the Jenner and Block law firm  said they believed there could be grounds for a lawsuit and conducted its own yearlong investigation. On July 11, Jenner and Block filed the lawsuit.

Fisher said BRUSH’s lawsuit is Powell’s personal vendetta against a company that is currently taking her mother to court. Powell’s 74-year-old mother is being charged with destruction of property for allegedly writing graffiti in the elevator.

Powell said that charge is ridiculous, though she also said her elderly mother was constantly without heat in her West Harlem apartment and had taped notes to the elevator to get other tenants to complain. The super had ripped down the notes every time. One day a message appeared on the elevator wall in permanent black marker: "For heat, call 311."  

Jessica Glazer and Gissette Rojas contributed to this article.