A former longtime investor and Nile Niami associate claims the embattled spec developer defrauded him out of millions on a failed high-profile house flip in the Hollywood Hills.
“The first few real estate transactions that … Niami enticed [the investor] into doing were profitable,” according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Inferno California, a development firm tied to Canadian-based finance company Allrem, in Los Angeles County court last month. The suit names Niami along with Contemporary Vista, an entity controlled by the developer, as defendants and alleges both fraud and breach of contract.
After those initial profitable deals, the investor loaned Niami more than $3 million for another house flip around late 2017, but Niami squandered the money on personal expenses rather than renovations, the suit alleges, while also claiming Niami broke a promise to split rental profits and left the investor in the lurch by failing to pay other debts, which ultimately led to a foreclosure sale.
“To date … Niami has never accounted to [the investor] for how the monies were spent,” the suit states. It adds that “Niami’s conduct under the circumstances is despicable.”
The investor is not named in the suit, but appears to be Julien Rémillard, a wealthy French Canadian whom Niami has previously described as his best friend until the relationship grew rancorous over financial issues. Rémillard is the son of Lucien Rémillard, a Quebecois waste management mogul who later transitioned into a career as a financier. Julien, who is now around 50 years old, is a film producer and serves as president of Allrem, a financial holding company that’s also involved in real estate development.
A lawyer representing Inferno California did not respond to multiple interview requests about the suit, and Niami also did not respond: The developer’s voicemail said he was busy with production obligations related to a new streaming project that he has previously compared to “The Truman Show.”
The lawsuit comes amid bigger turmoil for Niami, who is best known for The One, the 105,000-square-foot Bel Air megamansion that sold at a bankruptcy auction in March for $126 million to fashion mogul Richard Saghian. The price, which came after years of construction issues and high-stakes drama, represented a record for a home sold at auction in the United States, but it was still far less than Niami’s earlier promises and failed to cover the $250 million in debt on the project, spawning a flurry of lawsuits and legal battles that are still unfolding.
Rémillard was an early investor on The One. In June, following the bankruptcy auction — and legal proceedings that meant the mansion’s biggest lender, Don Hankey, would be repaid first, leaving little if any money left for other creditors — the investment firm also filed a suit arguing that a signature had been forged and that it should be repaid ahead of Hankey. That legal case remains ongoing.
Inferno California’s new lawsuit concerns a property located at 9066 St. Ives Drive, above the Sunset Strip. The mansion was originally built in 1952 and sits on nearly a quarter acre; property records show that Niami bought it for $9.5 million in 2015 from the entertainment mogul Scooter Braun, who had paid $5.7 million four years earlier.
Niami, who also owned a larger mansion about a mile to the east, was planning to renovate the property and later flip it. In July 2015, the same day his $9.5 million purchase was recorded, the developer secured an $8.8 million construction loan from First Republic Bank, according to property records.
About two years later he approached Rémillard looking for more financing for the project, according to the suit, and the Quebecois investor ended up forking over $3.5 million, including “at least $300,000” that was payable on demand and secured by Niami’s 1983 Gulfstream jet. The lawsuit refers to an Inferno “principal,” but never explicitly names Rémillard.
Property records show Niami embarked on at least some construction work, securing permits for work on the pool and a new patio and retaining wall, among other features. In 2018, he also listed the 6,000-square-foot pad as a rental for $85,000 a month. A couple of years later, in the thick of the pandemic, Niami would also be cited by the City of L.A. for illegal parties held at the house. (Niami denied hosting them.)
The suit alleges that the developer blew at least a portion of Rémillard’s investment money, using it for “personal expenses” rather than construction, and that Niami, who “earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent,” reneged on an agreement to split the profits equally. He also never recorded the loan in the first place, the suit alleges.
By late 2020, Niami — also heavily embattled on The One — was in arrears on payments to First Republic Bank over the St. Ives Drive project, and that December the lender sold off the mansion for $9.6 million. It was almost the exact same price the developer had paid in the first place, before he took on millions in renovation loans.
That foreclosure sale came “much to the surprise” of Rémillard, the suit says. By then the relationship between the two men had been cold for two years, according to the complaint’s timeline.
Inferno California is seeking at least $3.2 million, plus punitive damages.
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