Investor Shaya Prager isn’t answering Keelee Leyden’s questions about what happened to more than $2 million she needs.
Prager, head of embattled New York-based landlord Opal Holdings, is facing accusations from Leyden — a receiver with Cushman & Wakefield — that his firm is improperly withholding cash needed to manage a 697,000-square-foot suburban Chicago office property amid its lender’s $106 million foreclosure lawsuit, court documents show.
Leyden was appointed by a Lake County judge to oversee the Corporate 500 Campus at 500-540 Lake Cook Road in Deerfield — which Prager’s firm bought for $178 million in 2021 — while Unify Financial Credit Union’s foreclosure of the loan to Opal plays out.
Shortly after Leyden’s appointment in July, however, $1 million was wired out of the Opal-owned property’s bank accounts, frustrating the receiver’s efforts to keep the asset healthy amid Unify’s dispute with the landlord, Leyden claimed in a court motion.
Plus, Leyden is requesting the return of over $1 million in other payments and security deposits moved out of the property’s accounts that she says shouldn’t have been transferred. The receiver hounded Opal for weeks to resolve the matters before asking the court to intervene.
The receiver’s accusations against Prager’s firm follow a string of foreclosure lawsuits on its other properties — including a massive Minneapolis-area office campus as well as Fort Worth’s tallest tower — after it allegedly defaulted on more than $100 million in loans for those properties. Prager’s firm also faces allegations of duping lenders into letting Opal double-dip on debt.
The court has yet to rule on Leyden’s motion to compel Prager to turn over the Corporate 500 property’s funds. Representatives of Opal didn’t return requests for comment. Leyden and her attorney, Aaron Gavant with Barnes & Thornburg, also didn’t return requests for comment.
The fight over the missing money from the suburban Chicago office building is being hashed out in Unify Financial Credit Union’s foreclosure suit against the Opal affiliate that owns the property, which was sparked by Opal allegedly failing to pay property taxes.
Opal bought the Corporate 500 campus amid perhaps the largest suburban office buying spree during the pandemic, when the firm spent more than $2 billion buying up properties across the U.S. It also owns 35 West Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, which it bought for more than $400 million, and a Naperville office building it bought for $73 million.
But the firm has come under increasing pressure from lenders as well as investors in recent months. In addition to the foreclosure, a group of investors claims it’s owed $10 million by Prager, which he has disputed by citing a handshake deal with the fundraisers.
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