The first true “headline” of landlords committing arson would likely be the arrest of 8 landlords, detailed in the New York Times in 1975.[31] Among these were the highly-publicized case of Imre Oberlander and Yishai Webber, two Brooklyn-based landlords who were caught driving to one of their buildings whilst wearing blackface, explosives in tow.[32] Critically, none of these landlords were black or Latino. The landlords profited greatly off their insurance policies; Oberlander, for example, had collected $125,000 (over $750,000 in 2026) in payouts from twenty-one separate fires between 1970 and 1975.

It was a slow-motion white collar riot