My former beau stole my business: lawsuit

This deal left blood in the water.

Ryan Slack, former CEO of the real-estate site Property Shark, is a business and romantic predator, charges former girlfriend Sandy Hussain.

She claims in a lawsuit that he chomped her business, “stealing” Fashion Digital New York, which has produced conferences for fashion executives since 2012.

Hussain and other former girlfriends cited in the suit call Slack a pathological liar and philanderer who, in his own words, “survives off a steady diet of (New York City) women.”

One ex-girlfriend accused Slack of paying women to curry favor by “using company money when you’re trying to get back with them,” and went on to say, “Your penis doesn’t work well at all, you’re a psychotic, stalking waste of life.”

“Ryan Slack lied and cheated his way into my life, my heart and then into my business,” Hussain said. She is seeking at least $44 million from Slack and his companies.

Hussain, a 35-year-old Harvard grad from Brooklyn, says in court papers that she began dating Slack, 43, in 2010, unaware he was living with another woman.

Slack, who got an MBA from Stanford University, joined an old college buddy who had founded Property Shark, a site that provides details on sales and other real-estate data.

Slack left Property Shark in 2008 and later started a company called GreenPearl Events.

Hussain says that she confided in him about an idea for a new venture combining fashion and technology and that they agreed to divide the profits equally. GreenPearl was to be a backer of the company, but the pair never formalized the deal in writing.

Hussain said she broke off her relationship with Slack in September 2012 because of his infidelity and “he responded by throwing an object at me and threatening to ‘beat my face to a pulp,’ ” court documents charge.

She continued to work on Fashion Digital New York and maintains that its first event, in October 2012, was a “big financial success” but that Slack never paid her her share. She says he also shut her out of the daily operations of the company.

 

Another conference took place in 2013, but Hussain says she wasn’t restored to her leadership position at Fashion Digital until she started dating Slack again in early 2014.

By the 2014 conference last month, they had split again. Although the event went forward, Hussain alleges that Slack subsequently blocked access to her Fashion Digital e-mails, told clients that she was no longer involved in the company, and did not invite her to a celebratory party thrown with conference revenue.

She claims the October event — which focused on e-commerce and included speakers from the Warby Parker, Zappos and Gilt Groupe sites — grossed $750,000 but she was not paid.

Slack, who lives in Manhattan, did not respond to a request for comment.