A pair of creditors have sued Reliable Properties President Jack Nourafshan for more than $15.7 million for his part in an alleged scheme to buy and sell family members’ pricey Beverly Hills homes to protect the properties from seizure.
The suit filed last week in California’s Central District Court revolves around two multimillion-dollar homes in Beverly Hills — 910 North Rexford Drive and 580 Chalette Drive — owned, respectively, by Nourafshan’s brother-in-law, Massoud Aaron Yashouafar, and Aaron Yashouafar’s brother, Solyman Yashouafar.
The pair owed their creditors, New York-based brothers Howard and Israel Abselet, for a roughly $1.7 million loan in 2009, the suit says. The Yashouafar siblings would file for bankruptcy in August 2016, but undertook the scheme to shed the homes a year ealier.
The suit alleges that Nourafshan and the Yashouafar brothers conspired to ensure that Nourafshan or his companies were the only bidder at the homes’ early 2015 foreclosure auctions, including by overstating liens on the properties by millions of dollars and by publishing that one of the auctions would happen at a non-existent post office.
Nourafshan picked up the 580 Chalette Drive property for $5.8 million and the 910 North Rexford Drive for $782,508, even though the plaintiffs allege the latter was worth between $12 and $15 million at the time, the suit claims.
A few months later, Nourafshan sold the home on Chalette Drive for just under $9 million to John and Nooshin Malakzads, netting $2.6 million, all of which he transferred back to the Malakzads, the suit says. Nourafshan then signed a $25,000-per-month lease with Massoud Yashouafar for his former home at 910 Rexford Drive. Massoud allegedly never paid any rent, and Nourafshan never took any action to evict him.
The Abselets want the court to reverse the foreclosures, and they are asking for more than $15.7 million in compensatory damages, in addition to further damages determined at trial.
Nourafshan declined to comment on the suit.
The Abselets’ and Yashouafars’ business dealings reportedly don’t just concern that $1.7 million loan and the homes end there. In 2012, the Abselets took control over Oklahoma City’s First National Center, once owned by the Yashouafars, after a judge determined the Yashouafars failed to repay a $6 million loan in 2012. — Christian Bautista contributed reporting