Trump Tower 725 Fifth Avenue
Paul Manafort, Strategic Consultant in Ukraine, Trump’s Campaign manager, Consultant to Turkey
“The Trump Organization said the building was refinanced for $100 million in August 2012, allowing Trump to take a cash distribution of over $73 million. Trump also has the leasehold at the Niketown building at 6 East 57th Street..which abuts Trump tower” The Real Deal
Bayrock, the Trump Tower development company being investigated for money laundering with Felix Sater as Managing Director and developer of Trump Soho.
“FBI agents subpoenaed Trump in 1980 to ask about his dealing with John Cody, a Teamsters official described by law enforcement as a very close associate of the Gambino crime family…But a female friend of Cody’s, a woman with no job who attributed her lavish lifestyle to the kindness of friends, bought three Trump Tower apartments right beneath the triplex where Donald lived with his wife Ivana. Cody stayed there on occasion and invested $500,000 in the units. Trump, Barrett reported, helped the woman get a $3 million mortgage without filling out a loan application or showing financials.” Politico
Joseph Weichselbaum, an embezzler who ran Trump’s personal helicopter service and ferried his most valued clientele. Weichselbaum, who in 1979 had been caught embezzling and had to repay the stolen money, pleaded guilty to two felonies. Donald Trump vouched for Weichselbaum before his sentencing, writing that the drug trafficker is “a credit to the community” who was “conscientious, forthright, and diligent.” And while Weichselbaum’s confederates got as many as 20 years, Weichselbaum himself got only three, serving 18 months before he was released from the urban prison that the Bureau of Prisons maintains in New York City. In seeking early release, Weichselbaum said Trump had a job waiting for him. Weichselbaum then moved into Trump Tower, his girlfriend having recently bought two adjoining apartments there for $2.4 million. The cash purchase left no public record of whether any money actually changed hands or, if it did, where it came from. I asked Trump at the time for documents relating to the sale; he did not respond.” Politico
Trump World Tower
Kellyanne Conway (Bloomberg)
Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney (Bloomberg)
Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs Bloomberg “At Trump World Tower, [Sam] Kislin provided a mortgage to Vasily Salygin, a future official of the Ukrainian Party of Regions linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, to buy an 83rd-floor apartment. Salygin’s time in office overlapped with Paul Manafort’s tenure as an adviser to the party. The push to sell units in Trump World Tower to Russians expanded in 2002, when Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with Kirsanova Realty, a Russian company. One reception at Moscow’s swank Hotel Baltschug Kempinski pitched the tower alongside Trump’s West Side condos and his building on Columbus Circle.
Eduard Nektalov, an Uzbekistan-born diamond dealer, purchased a 79th-floor unit directly below [Kellyanne] Conway’s for $1.6 million in July 2003. He was being investigated by federal agents for a money-laundering scheme, which involved smelting gold to make it appear like everyday objects that were then hauled to drug cartels in Colombia. Nektalov sold his unit a month after he bought it for a $500,000 profit. Less than a year later, Nektalov, rumored to have been cooperating with authorities, was gunned down on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue.”Bloomberg
“Sales agent Stotts helped rent out apartments owned by those who invested in World Tower. Her very first job was filling [Michael] Cohen’s apartment after he moved to 502 Park Ave., another Trump building. Three months after the New York Post reported that Cohen and his Ukrainian in-laws had bought units in World Tower, Trump hired him.”Bloomberg
Trump 502 Park Avenue, New York
“Trump does still own 23 apartments at Trump Park Avenue, which he rents for rates as high as $100,000 per month, and 19 units at Trump Parc.”The Real Deal
Michael Cohen
Angela Chen “has ties to important members of the Chinese ruling elite and to an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence. Chen, who also goes by the names Xiao Yan Chen and Chen Yu, purchased the four-bedroom condo in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City on February 21 (2017 for $15.8 million). As Mother Jones first reported, Chen runs a business consulting firm, Global Alliance Associates, which specializes in linking US businesses seeking deals in China with the country’s top power brokers. “As counselors in consummating the right relationships—quite simply—we provide access,” Chen’s firm boasts on its website. But Chen has another job: She chairs the US arm of a nonprofit called the China Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2006 and has links with Chinese elites and the country’s military intelligence service. The China Arts Foundation was created by Deng Rong, the youngest daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the iconic revolutionary figure and Chinese leader.” Mother Jones
“It all started in 1994, when Trump was facing foreclosure on the Riverside South residential high-rises he’d developed on Manhattan’s far West Side. He sold a majority interest in the buildings to a consortium of Hong Kong investors, who then made a deal to swap the properties with Extell Development and the Carlyle Group in exchange for 1290 Sixth Avenue and 555 California Street” The Real Deal
“New York Residential Property with Trump Name, The majority are co-ops and condos that have long since sold out.: Trump Palace on East 69th Street, Trump Parc at 106 Central Park South, Trump Parc East at 100 Central Park South, Trump Plaza on 61st Street and Trump International Hotel & Tower at 1 Central Park West”The Real Deal
Trump Soho, New York-Now The Dominick Hotel
The Trump SoHo Hotel Has a New Name Fortune By HALLIE DETRICK December 21, 2017 “As of midnight on Thursday, the business now operates as The Dominick Hotel. The property will be run by an affiliate of CIM Group, which has owned the hotel since 2014. The hotel-cum-condominium building was seemingly doomed from the start, hitting the market just as the Great Recession settled in; dogged by bankruptcy, rumored criminal activity and even russia meddling among investors; and only able to sell one-third of its units by the time CIM Group bought it in a foreclosure auction. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office even began building a case against Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for misrepresenting the success of the building to potential buyers. But don’t shed a tear for the Trump family, there are still plenty of buildings in New York that bear the family name.”
Trump Palace 200 E 69th St, New York, NY 10021
“Igor Zorin, who owned three apartments in Trump Palace: $1,57 million, $2,32 million and $2,22 million, is another high-level Russian government official holding a series of strategically important positions related to propaganda.A deputy head of the Federal Communications Agency at the time of his Miami real estate operations, Zorin previously served as the director of the Main Center for Special Communications, a federal state unitary enterprise that acted as a courier service in charge of the delivery of secret dispatches, narcotic drugs, weapons and cash. In 2009, Zorin left this position due to a scandal: he was accused of the theft of nineteen million rubles. In 2010, Zorin was awarded the Medal of the Order “For Services to the Fatherland of the II Degree” by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On awarding state awards of the Russian Federation” №650 dated May 27, 2010 “for the work achievement and many years of conscientious work.” The awards were presented by the head of the ministry Igor Shchegolev.” Zarina Zabrisky
Trump Parc
Trump owns 19 units The Real Deal
Trump International Hotel & Tower, Ft. Lauderdale
“In 2011, for instance, buyers at three separate Trump-branded properties, including the Trump International Hotel and Tower Fort Lauderdale, sued the mogul for allegedly misleading them into believing he was the developer and later pulling his name from the projects once they went belly-up. The Trump Organizations denies those claims. Some of those lawsuits, however, are still ongoing.Trump Soho, NY.”The Real Deal
“At projects such as the Trump Soho hotel/condominium at 246 Spring Street (developed by a partnership between the Bayrock Group and New York City developer Tamir Sapir) Trump is paid for the use of his name, but does not invest any of his own capital. Trump sometimes manages these projects, as he did in the case of Trump Soho, and always takes a licensing fee of $5 to $10 million, according to news reports. In some cases, he also takes a portion of potential future sales at the building.” The Real Deal
“Simultaneous with when the [Trump World] tower was going up, developer Gil Dezer and his father, Michael, were building a Trump-backed condo project in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. “Russians love the Trump brand,” he says, adding that Russians and Russian Americans bought some 200 of 2,000 units in Trump buildings he built. They flooded into Trump projects from 2001 to 2007, helping Trump weather the real estate collapse, he says.” Bloomberg
San Francisco 1290 Sixth Avenue and 555 California
“Trump acquired the last two significant pieces of his commercial real estate holdings, 1290 Sixth Avenue and San Francisco’s 555 California Street, in an unusual way: through a property swap.”The Real Deal
40 Wall Street, NY
A gorgeous green, copper-topped vintage skyscraper in the heart of Wall Street.
“Trump has a $160 million mortgage attached to the property.” The Real Deal
“They want that Wall Street address,” Donald Trump Jr., who’s in charge of leasing for the Trump Organization, which manages the building, told Commercial Property Executive in 2010. “We’re basically catty-corner from the stock market.”A cheap way to get a 40 Wall St. address is to grab space on the 28th floor, which is broken up into small offices. The firms listed in the lobby directory for that floor include Your Trading Room, a foreign-exchange operation ordered shut by an Australian court in 2012; Asian AIM Incubator Co., which Malaysian regulators put on a list of possible scams; Stilas International Law, whose founder was banned from practicing law in Virginia; and Ero Capital Corp., run by a man convicted of credit-card fraud.Even one of the four Cushman & Wakefield brokers who handle leasing for the skyscraper is a felon. Jeffrey Lichtenberg admitted accepting a bribe in 1999 after an investigation of bid-rigging in the construction business. He declined to comment.The tower also houses a Girl Scouts office and an elementary school with its own entrance.
Eleven new tenants were cited in that interview. Since then, the heads of four of them have been charged with fraud.
No U.S. address has been home to more of the unregistered brokerages that investors complain about, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current public alert list….Trump took it over in 1995 in what may be the best deal of his career. No single property in his portfolio is more valuable than 40 Wall St…prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases. Many were brought against principals, executives and other employees, not the firms themselves. Some are still pending. Here are the allegations, as well as descriptions of other firms in the tower that trade stocks and arrange loans….The tower was built to be the tallest in the world. It lost out, was foreclosed on and for a while was in the secret control of Filipino despots (hiding money for Marcos)….By 1993, the building was a “vertical ghost town” whose windows were dark while the rest of the Financial District glowed, the Associated Press reported. Kinson Properties, an arm of a Hong Kong-based footwear and real estate company, acquired it that year. Trump pounced when Kinson had trouble turning the building around, he wrote. He said he paid $1 million for the right to lease the building through 2059. A deal with lenders saved him from ruin. A few weeks before Trump signed the lease for 40 Wall St., friends threw him a lunch to celebrate his rebound, praising his comeback and even joking about a possible career in politics.Today, in addition to housing legitimate lawyers, architects and nonprofits, it offers a cheap way to grab a Wall Street address. The building’s average annual rent per square foot is $36, mortgage filings show, about $20 cheaper than the area’s average asking price and less than half of Midtown’s rates. At one point in 2010, according to regulators, brokers on the 34th floor were allegedly helping the financier on the 38th with a penny-stock scam; a brokerage on the 17th floor was involved in an unrelated fraud; and a bond-trading firm on the 42nd floor was bribing a Venezuelan official to win business. Trump Mortgage, on the 25th floor, was launched at the height of the housing bubble and closed in 2007. Trump wrote in his 2008 book “Trump Never Give Up” that tenants at 40 Wall St. are “many of the top-notch businesses in the world.”
Viceroy Capital Funding, Convicted: Viceroy, which arranges loans to small businesses, was accused in a lawsuit brought by a borrower of charging a 299 percent annualized interest rate. The case was settled out of court. Jonathan Braun, who runs the business according to a person with knowledge of the matter, is awaiting sentencing for running a marijuana-smuggling ring from his parents’ Staten Island house.
DirectView Holdings, Convicted: CEO Roger Ralston was sentenced to five months in a halfway house in 2001 for bribing government employees to buy video-conferencing equipment.
Wolf Hedge, Convicted: Mark Malik, 34, pretended to have died from a heart attack when investors tried to withdraw money from his fake hedge fund, according to the SEC. He’s currently serving 5-15 years for swindling investors out of more than $800,000.
EJS Capital Management, Convicted: Brokers cold-called investors, pitching a currency-trading strategy, then spent almost all the money they sent in, according to a December civil court ruling. One of the operators, Alex Ekdeshman, 43, is serving a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to another foreign-exchange fraud last year. (2015)
Barclay Metals, Convicted: The CFTC barred Sean Stropp from the commodities industry for five years in 2013 for this alleged precious-metals scam, which used a 40 Wall St. address. New York prosecutors also charged him that year with fraud. He was convicted and served almost two years in prison.
Rosabianca & Associates, Convicted: Real estate lawyer Luigi Rosabianca catered to foreign clients who sometimes paid with suitcases full of cash, he told New York magazine in 2014. “Real estate is a wonderful way to cleanse money,” he said. A year later, he was disbarred and charged with stealing $4.4 million from six clients, whose victims allegedly include a woman suffering from schizophrenia. Rosabianca pleaded guilty to grand larceny and will be sentenced this month to four to 12 years.
Spyker Consulting, Convicted: Spyker principal Luis Ferreira was on supervised release from prison for a telemarketing scam when the firm leased space in the building around 2009. He was arrested in 2010 for violating his parole with the new scheme. He fled rather than return to jail, and is now on the FBI’s white-collar most-wanted list.
Essex & York, Convicted: The heads of this brokerage firm and six employees were accused in 2006 of running a $13 million pump-and-dump scheme. They allegedly cold-called investors and convinced them to invest in a temp agency, then sold their own shares when the stock rose. Seven pleaded guilty and one died before his case was resolved.
First Merger Capital, Convicted: The heads of this defunct brokerage took a $350,000 payment from a Chinese kitchen-appliance company and pushed its stock to investors, according to regulators. One of the co-heads filed an appeal this year after the SEC sided with Finra against the two men. Their partner Ronen Zakai, 45, spent most of last year in prison after being convicted of stealing the $705,000 he raised to invest in the Facebook IPO.
Evergreen International Spot Trading, Convicted: The firm’s currency-trading scam came to light when customers asked about their money after the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors called one of the four executives convicted of cheating investors “the Michael Jordan of investment fraud” and said another faked his suicide after wiring money to Azerbaijan.
Direct Access Partners, Convicted: This bond-trading firm went bust after a bribery scheme surfaced in 2013. Prosecutors said executives conspired to make payments to a Venezuelan state bank official. Former CEO Benito Chinea is serving a four-year prison sentence, and four other employees also pleaded guilty to criminal charges.
The David Firm, Convicted: Earl David, a lawyer, was sentenced to prison in 2013 after using phony employment claims in what officials called one of the largest immigration frauds in U.S. history.
Stilas International Law, Sanctioned: Matthew Bennett Greene was banned from practicing law in Virginia in 2009 after two clients claimed they paid for services he didn’t deliver. In 2013, Connecticut’s banking commissioner fined him for violating securities law related to investments in a B movie that promised investors 1,000 percent returns.
Aegis Capital, Sanctioned: The brokerage was fined $950,000 by Finra last year for helping a financier unload billions of unregistered shares of penny stocks. The firm didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing.
John Carris Investments, Sanctioned: George Carris, who owned the firm, was expelled last year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for selling shares of his brokerage without disclosing it was short of capital and for manipulating a penny stock. Regulators also alleged he spent company money on tattoos, liquor and motorcycles.
Banc de Binary, Sanctioned: This Cyprus-based firm operated an unlicensed binary-options brokerage in the U.S., soliciting investors with YouTube videos and spam e-mails to bet on whether stocks would rise or fall, according to the SEC, which sued in 2013. The firm and affiliates agreed to pay $11 million this year to settle regulators’ claims without admitting or denying the allegations.
Your Trading Room, Sanctioned: This currency-trading firm advertised that it taught secrets that “will change your life.” An Australian court ordered it liquidated in 2012 after a report that it was run by someone who had been banned by the country’s securities regulator.
GunnAllen Financial, Sanctioned: This Florida-based brokerage closed in 2010 after Finra said it didn’t have sufficient capital. The firm was overwhelmed by legal costs from some brokers’ involvement in two Ponzi schemes. “You cannot let the inmates run the asylum, and that’s where the firm failed,” its former general counsel was quoted as saying at the time.
Trump University, Settlement Approved: CNN on March 31, 2017 New York’s attorney general is suing the unlicensed school for fraud. Students who signed up for real estate seminars were told they would be taught by experts hand-picked by Trump but were instructed instead by neophytes and bankrupt investors
New York Global Group, Facing Accusations: Benjamin Wey helped Chinese companies raise tens of millions of dollars in the U.S. before he was arrested last year and accused of securities fraud. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called him a “master of manipulation.” Wey has pleaded not guilty. He said in a court filing last month that his business was legitimate and the case against him is based on an illegal FBI search of 40 Wall St.
Felix Investments, Facing Accusations: Frank Mazzola, whose office was marked only by an 8.5-by-11-inch piece of paper, tried to raise money from investors by saying a fund he set up to buy Facebook shares had been approved by the social-networking company, according to a 2012 SEC lawsuit. After settling that case for $500,000 in 2014, Mazzola was sued by the agency in March for his ties to another alleged fraud. He said in court filings that he’s fighting the lawsuit.
Saddle River Advisors, Facing Accusations: John Bivona was sued by the SEC in March for fraud related to pre-IPO tech companies,a ponzi-like scheme. Bivona allegedly funneled investor money to relatives including his nephew, Frank Mazzola, also on the 17th floor. The SEC says the family used the money to pay the mortgage on a Jersey Shore vacation home. Both men denied wrongdoing in court filings. Bivona’s lawyer, Jahan Pierre Raissi, didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Patriarch Partners, Facing Accusations: Private equity manager Lynn Tilton, who was once in talks to star in a reality show called “Diva of Distressed,” had an office in the building for years. The SEC accused her last year of defrauding investors in three collateralized-loan-obligation funds, a case that’s still pending. A countersuit she filed against the agency was thrown out on appeal.
Forex Trading, Exonerated: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused the head of this business, Ross Erskine, of fraud in 2004 and said he had also set up Goros LLC as “a classic boiler room.” Erskine successfully argued that his currency-trading program wasn’t subject to the agency’s regulation. Judge Boyko found evidence of fraud but none that those in question were futures transactions.
A.B. Watley Group, Exonerated: Day traders at this firm allegedly bribed Merrill Lynch and Citigroup brokers to allow them to listen in on the squawk box audio feed where brokers discussed clients’ trades. A jury found six participants guilty in 2009, but the convictions were reversed in 2012 because prosecutors withheld evidence.” Bloomberg
Trump International Hotel & Tower, Dubai
Does not own but licensed his name.
