Local News in Brief : Apartment Manager Accused of Perjury
A West Hollywood community activist who has frequently been at odds with city officials has been charged with perjury and presenting false evidence in a dispute involving an apartment building he manages.
E. (Budd) Kops, 69, is charged with two counts each of perjury and offering a forged or altered document as genuine and one count of falsifying a document, all felonies, Deputy Dist. Atty. Hugh M. Bobys said.
The charges stem from a document that Kops submitted to the city’s Department of Rent Stabilization to obtain a rent increase last year for an apartment that had become vacant, the prosecutor said.
Under West Hollywood’s strict rent control law, once an apartment becomes vacant, a landlord or an agent acting on the landlord’s behalf has 30 days from the time the unit is re-occupied to apply for a rent increase.
Kops, who manages the apartment building for a company owned by a Los Angeles psychiatrist and his partner, denied any wrongdoing.
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