An heir to the defunct luxury superstore Barneys has alleged that his family defrauded New York state of $20 million in taxes in an explosive lawsuit.
Bob Pressman accused his late mother, Phyllis Pressman, and his siblings of orchestrating an elaborate ploy to convince the state that Phyllis was living in West Palm Beach, Florida, to avoid paying state income and estate taxes in New York, according to the New York Post. The lawsuit claims that Phyllis has lived in an oceanfront mansion in Southampton, New York, for the last six years of her life.
“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 suit says.
Phyllis, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 95, left behind an estate worth upward of $100 million. This includes a 2.3-acre mansion in the Hamptons valued at $38.5 million along with a $3.95 million Upper East Side apartment.
A source close to the case said Pressman, who had a turbulent relationship with his family, was cut from his mother’s will for refusing to participate in the alleged tax scheme. The late matriarch’s trust agreement reads: “Bob doesn’t get anything for reasons he well knows,” the source said.
The suit details how the matriarch moved to West Palm Beach in 2000 after the death of her first husband, Fred Pressman, and after she married her second husband, Joseph Gurwin. Phyllis continued to live in Florida until 2018, when she moved back to New York.
Phyllis allegedly recruited the other Pressman siblings—Gene, Elizabeth, and Nancy—in 2021 to carry out the fraud by saying that she lived in Palm Beach on her estate’s legal documents for the majority of the year after Bob refused to do so. In return, “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 said.
According to the suit, the three alleged accomplices also helped move their mother to hospice care in Florida a few months before the matriarch passed away in 2023 as they transferred the Hamptons mansion to a limited liability company.
The suit provided evidence of Phyllis’ New York residency with details of pharmacy prescriptions being filled at a local Southampton pharmacy and regular landline usage at her oceanfront home. Two aides were also employed in her New York mansion.
That same year, the jilted Pressman sibling was in the process of writing a bombshell book exposing the family affairs that caused Barney’s demise. The exposé, which has not yet been released, details the conflicts Pressman had with his other siblings, including lawsuits and playing the blame game for the company’s financial ruin.
Barneys, which began in 1923 as a men’s clothing store, flourished into a household name over the next century. But in 2020, Barneys closed, declaring bankruptcy.
The lawsuit claims that the family could owe up to $50 million in penalties and back taxes. According to an amended complaint filed in the New York state Supreme Court, Bob may be entitled to 30 percent of any recovery amount under the New York False Claims Act.
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