HFZ, Meir and executives from both HFZ and Omnibuild apparently defrauded subcontractors, financiers and the City of New York City.
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Previous HFZ Capital executive Nir Meir was officially charged on Thursday with taking more than $86 million, in addition to other market executives and HFZ Capital itself.
HFZ, Meir, and executives from both HFZ and the building and construction company Omnibuild apparently defrauded subcontractors, financiers and the City of New York City through a series of deceptive plans, according to an indictment by the Manhattan District Lawyer.
” These indictments illustrate accusations of prevalent scams within the realty market mostly led by one guy: Nir Meir,” District Lawyer Alvin Bragg stated in a declaration. “In overall, we declare these accuseds’ conspiracies netted them an overall of $86 million taken from financiers, professionals, and the City of New York City. My workplace’s Rackets Bureau is laser-focused on scams in the building and construction and realty markets and will continue to root out individuals who take from financiers and corrupt the marketplace.”
Meir was jailed today in Florida with strategies to extradite him to New york city to deal with charges.
Nir Meir. Image: Handout
Omnibuild executives John Mingione, Kevin Stewart and Roy Galifi were all implicated of grand larceny. Omnibuild was HFZ’s main specialist for the XI, a high-end apartment on Manhattan’s high line that the DA’s criminal probe focused around. The accuseds pleaded innocent, while the business did not react to ask for remark.
Together With Meir, HFZ previous handling director of building and construction Anthony Marone and previous HFZ senior job executive Louis Della-Peruta were charged with grand larceny.
District attorneys declare the accuseds made incorrect reports of building and construction expenses in 2019 and 2020 for the XI job in order to bilk their financiers and defraud the City of New York City of $15 million in taxes. Meir apparently did this by conspiring with Omnibuild and HFZ executives to pump up the “portion of conclusion” on their regular monthly billings to make the job seem closer to conclusion than it remained in truth. Their lending institutions thought them and maximized more capital for them.
The XI job entered into foreclosure in 2021 before it was finished and after Omnibuild submitted a lien versus HFZ in the summertime of 2020, declaring $100 million in overdue costs. It was bought by another designer who relabelled it One High Line and opened it in late 2023.
Meir was fired from HFZ and decamped to Florida, where he lived out of a series of high-end hotels before he was jailed one week after stating insolvency.
His arrest marked a spectacular fall from grace from 2nd in command at what was as soon as among the most popular and enthusiastic designers in Manhattan.
The DA’s query into the XI job likewise showed up a variety of unassociated supposed plans, consisting of one from a subcontractor who took $300,000 from the XI job, and $4.6 million apparently taken from a financier by HFZ to establish a business home in San Francisco that HFZ apparently never ever obtained to the rights to establish.