As threats loom for CA Ventures, CEO Tom Scott sells $25M jet

Tom Scott will be back to flying commercial — or at least chartering private planes.

The CEO of Chicago-based multifamily developer CA Ventures, a firm facing a slew of legal complaints across the nation that paint a dark picture of its financial health and Scott’s business practices, sold his privately owned jet this month.

The 2020 Citation Longitude, a 14-seat aircraft made by Cessna, was sold by an entity Scott managed called CAVA LLC, which had a Gary, Indiana address, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

The plane’s buyer appears to be an affiliate of Memphis-based NexAir that shares an address with the company that manufactures dry ice and other gasses, among other materials and equipment.

While terms of the plane’s sale are unclear, Matt Tilghman, a Texas-based private pilot who frequently flies a Cessna Latitude — a similar but less high-end model — said that Scott’s plane would have fetched about $25 million today. The pilot shared an advertisement he recently received from a plane broker marketing a 2020 Citation Longitude for $26 million.

Scott’s CAVA entity acquired the plane in 2021, according to public records. The same LLC previously owned another, smaller plane.

In 2019, a 10-seat jet model designed by a Raytheon affiliate known as a Hawker 400 was owned by CAVA, according to FlightAware.com data compiled from federal records. The 10-seat plane was transferred to a new owner, New York-based Wheels Up Partners LLC, in March 2022.

Scott did not return requests for comment. NexAir could not be reached for comment.

There’s a chance the plane has appreciated in value since it was purchased, according to Tilghman.

“Prices are pretty overrated on airplanes right now,” Tilghman said. “In 2020, you could buy an airplane that was say $11 million and today you could sell that exact same airplane with 500 more hours on it for $17 million. Buying the airplane is nothing. It’s operating it that’s the expensive part.”

Scott moved on from his jet as the CEO faces accusations of self-dealing for a Chicago office lease his firm entered from Canadian asset manager QuadReal, a former partner of CA Ventures in a large student housing portfolio that was just taken fully over by QuadReal amid construction delays for development projects that sent college students scrambling to find housing before their courses started this fall.

That’s just one of multiple lawsuits he and his firm are facing. In coming weeks, a former COO of CA Ventures is set to take Scott and various LLCs tied to the firm to trial in a Delaware court over allegations the CEO lowballed the fellow executive, JJ Smith, when he went to cash out his equity in the company.

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CA Ventures and Scott are also facing lawsuits from people who claim they loaned the firm a total of $10 million that was personally guaranteed for repayment by Scott, as well as a lawsuit by Coyote Logistics over costs for a luxury spectator’s box in the United Center that CA Ventures is allegedly supposed to split with the firm but hasn’t been covering its share.

CA Ventures or its affiliates have also been recently named in lawsuits in Iowa, where Chicago-based real estate brokerage and investment firm Bradford Allen is suing Scott’s firm, as well as Minnesota and California.