Wife's lawsuit: Mistress paid for Society Hill condo with sex

IT TURNS OUT when you rent a ritzy Society Hill condo to your mistress and let her pay for it with sex - as a lawsuit alleges a high-powered Brooklyn real-estate mogul did - you probably shouldn't list your wife as a property manager.

But Stuart Venner, according to a civil lawsuit filed by his wife on Friday in Philadelphia, may have made that mistake.

In the suit, Grace Chang Venner alleges that her husband, a Brooklyn developer, drew up a 40-year lease last January for another woman to live in a stately, three-story brick rowhouse he bought in 2012 on Pine Street near 5th.

But this wasn't just any lease, the suit claims: The agreement allegedly allowed defendant Panadda Pratomtang to rent the property for $1 a month until 2053 "in return for her providing prostitution services to Board Member, [Stuart] Venner."

Pratomtang first had a lease agreement for a year beginning in August 2012 - just after Venner bought the property for $900,000, according to city records. But in January 2014, the agreement was amended to a 40-year lease, allegedly paid for with sex.

Grace Chang Venner discovered her husband's curious agreement with the tenant after she was added last March as a manager of 421 Pine LLC, the real-estate business created by her husband for the Society Hill rowhouse, according to the suit.

"The lease agreement is not based on actual consideration, but rather on sex for rent," the lawsuit says. "This is prostitution pursuant to Pennsylvania law and an illegal contract."

Reached last night at his home in Brooklyn, Venner told the Daily News he was unaware of the lawsuit and called the allegations "ridiculous."

After asking for more details about the suit, Venner said, "I don't know anything about this, so that's my answer," and hung up the phone.

The developer grabbed headlines in New York in 2013 when he sent notices to a number of longtime Prospect Heights stalwarts - including mom-and-pop-owned shops and restaurants in the Brooklyn neighborhood for decades - that their leases would not be renewed.

As rents skyrocketed in the up-and-coming neighborhood centered on Flatbush Avenue and Park Place, Venner sought higher-price-tag tenants for the properties he owns under the company Vlacke Bos LLC, according to the New York Daily News.

Neither Venner's wife nor the Society Hill tenant could be reached last night for comment on the lawsuit at numbers listed for both women. R. Emmett Madden, a Jenkintown lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of Grace Chang Venner, declined to comment yesterday.

The suit asks that the lease agreement on Pine Street be voided, stating that Pratomtang committed fraud when she "knowingly concealed the true nature of her agreement with Stuart Venner . . . when she knew or should have known that [her] conduct was illegal and would have materially altered the lease, rendering it illegal."

The suit also seeks attorney's fees and punitive damages for the wife.

- Staff writer Dana DiFilippo contributed to this report.