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There’s a whole lot of finger pointing going on in River City.

The defunct Philadelphia development once known as River City, that is.

The former proposed mixed-use, 12 million-square-foot development in Philadelphia lured prospective investors with promises of several 600-foot skyscrapers, even though at the time, city ordinances prohibited skyscrapers taller than 125 feet and the advertised square footage greatly exceeded zoning regulations. Ultimately, the project collapsed and investors lost millions of dollars.

According to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, investors were told that changes to height and square footage restrictions were pending before the city common council at the time financing for the project was underway, and existing zoning regulations would not negatively impact the development.

When the project was exposed as a Ponzi scheme, British real estate investor Berish Berger sued developer Eli Weinstein, and business partners Ravinder Chawla and Richard Zeghibe, for fraud.  Unfortunately, this was not the first time Berger had been swindled by Weinstein. In the past, he had been induced to participate in several other fraudulent real estate schemes spearheaded by the man.  Weinstein was ultimately convicted of fraud and sentenced to 22 years in prison for using phony Philadelphia real estate projects to swindle members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Eventually, Berger was awarded $33 million in compensatory damages, but was unable to collect the judgment.

In 2012, Berger and other investors sued the Philadelphia office of the Chicago-based  commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, and the Philadelphia law firms of Cozen O’Connor and Bank Rome LLP in a New York federal court, alleging that they conned foreign investors into financing the project with inflated appraisals and false marketing.  In 2013, the district court ruled that the action should be tried in Philadelphia, not New York, and the case was transferred there.

The defendants were brought into the suit by virtue of their connection to Charles M. Naselsky, a former real estate lawyer at Cozen O’Connor and Blank Rome who marketed the River City Project, utilizing a $77 million appraisal offered by Cushman & Wakefield. In 2012, Naselsky was convicted of wire fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced to 70 months (five years and eight months) in prison.

Both law firms have filed motions for summary judgement, seeking to have the suit tossed out of court.