There’s $18 million hidden among the clutter of an eccentric hoarder’s Upper East Side apartment — but a Housing Court battle is keeping his widow from cashing in on her whopping inheritance.
The Manhattan woman, who has led a colorful life that included a stint with the KGB, is poised to collect her second husband’s huge fortune as soon as she can get the keys to his rent-stabilized apartment from the landlord.
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A room in millionaire hoarder Lewis Zagor’s Upper East Side apartmentPhoto: Valentina Phillips-Zagor
Despite his wealth, stock whiz Lewis Zagor lived in the two-bedroom apartment for more than 35 years until his death at age 77 last December. He was paying just $1,600 a month for the apartment at Park Avenue and East 97th Street when he died.
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Valentina Phillips is locked in a dispute with her late husband’s landlord over access to the keys to the apartment — which will ultimately allow her to claim her husband’s $18 million fortune.Photo: Valentina Phillips-Zagor
The widow, 68-year-old Valentina Phillips, sued landlord MSMC Residential Realty in Manhattan Housing Court earlier this year, claiming she’d been locked out of the place.
The landlord’s lawyer, Benjamin Eisenberger, countered in court papers that the widow was almost $5,000 behind on rent.
He told The Post his client would allow Phillips to take over her late husband’s lease if she promised to actually live there. But in court papers, Phillips has said she also resides in a Fifth Avenue apartment and keeps a place in Kensington, Brooklyn.
Her stranger-than-fiction bio includes a stint as a translator for the former Soviet spy agency and world travels that ended in New York with a marriage to Zagor a decade ago.
Her real-estate attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, told The Post his client needs access to her husband’s apartment so she can gather paperwork necessary to collect the eight-figure fortune.
The independent investor died without a will, but according to state law, his spouse has a right to all his money because he had no other living relatives.
Phillips is supposed to get the keys to the apartment back this week if she agrees to make the unit her primary residence, the landlord’s attorney said.
The widow’s own lawyer admitted her housing situation is ludricrous.
“There’s something wrong with our law where you get to be a multi-multimillionaire and get to live in a rent-stabilized apartment,” Bailey said.
Phillips said her husband had a shopping addiction and went on sprees at luxe department stores when he was feeling down.
But he also coached his third wife on how to invest.
“My handsome, intelligent husband, with four college degrees,” Phillips said, recalling her late spouse. “I got married because we fell in love with each other.”
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