Boymelgreen is the CEO of the Brooklyn-based development group Boymelgreen, which builds and renovates luxury apartment buildings.

In 1969, the Israeli-born, Lubavitch-Jewish Boymelgreen moved to America to study at a New York yeshiva. He eventually pursued a series of disparate occupations: He worked at a diamond mine in Brazil, opened a Jewish bookstore, Eichler's, and founded an asbestos-removal business. It was real estate, though, that put him on the map. In the mid-'90s, Boymelgreen started developing unremarkable low-rise buildings in Brooklyn; he moved onto more high profile, high end projects after linking up with Israeli diamond billionaire Lev Leviev in late 2001. With Leviev, who runs a diamond conglomerate called Africa-Israel Investments, Boymelgreen founded Leviev Boymelgreen and has been one of the most prolific developers in Manhattan in recent years. Boymelgreen and Leviev dissolved their partnership in late 2006, reportedly because of lingering acrimony over losses they incurred in several Miami developments.

You can't develop a building in Brooklyn without pissing off hordes of people—see Bruce Ratner, David Walentas, and Joseph Sitt—but Boymelgreen is especially controversial. Since he rarely hires union workers to build his buildings, labor rights activists and union workers themselves have repeatedly picketed his construction sites. There was even an anti-Boymelgreen website, shayaiscoming.com, devoted to warning the uninitiated about Boymelgreen's past labor abuses and otherwise monitoring the bearded builder. [Image via Getty]