San Gabriel Valley’s KoTai Realty files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

KoTai Realty, a San Gabriel Valley real estate firm that gained notoriety for allegedly running illegal boarding houses for Chinese immigrants, has entered bankruptcy.

KoTai and its sibling company East Mission 8 both filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Central District of California. Total claims listed for the bankruptcies come to more than $14 million. Court documents did not provide a reason for the bankruptcies.

However, the filings listed creditors and debts owed. Claims included $99,000 for back rent, as well as  $5 million for a debt from a probate case. KoTai was contesting the debt. Another was a $3.8 million loan that KoTai founder Curt Wang gave to his company. 

Wang and a division of KoTai were called out in a 2020 investigation by LAist for running tenements, called boarding houses, in the San Gabriel Valley area that cater to Chinese immigrants. The investigation found that officials from the City of Monterey Park had investigated Wang’s properties frequently, and in 2016 listed 85 violations of city code such as excessive beds, or packing more people than code allowed in at least eight units, as well as mold, roaches and exposed electrical wiring.

The LAist story said Monterey Park fined Wang $350. Wang denied wrongdoing. There is no record of disciplinary action for Wang on California’s Department of Real Estate website.

A company biography describes KoTai as a division of Cathay Realty, another company owned by Wang. He started Cathay Realty in 1979. In the past four decades, Wang has worked in real estate sales, property management and property development.

Representing KoTai in the bankruptcy is Michael Jay Berger, the attorney who represented developer Alex Khadavi during bankruptcy proceedings over his megamansion 777 Sarbonne Avenue in Bel-Air, which was sold at auction for $45.7 million in March 2022. An email requesting comment from KoTai’s attorney was not returned.