A 2 a.m. call to Michael Hershman’s hotel room relayed a simple message: Take $1 million to stop investigating payments from the Bofors arms company to Indian government officials, or be killed.
The private investigator didn’t take the money. It wasn’t the first time he’d been threatened. He did switch rooms.
“I have always found that those who threaten you, anonymously or otherwise, are the last people you have to be worried about,” said the now 78-year-old executive, who took over as Soloviev Group CEO in 2021. “You have to worry about the folks that don’t threaten you.”
The late-night call nearly 40 years ago isn’t the only story from Hershman’s life that reads like something from a Tom Clancy novel, or as if he were born into a “Truman Show” spinoff that thrusts its main character into the center of momentous historical events. He’s likely the only real estate executive with a page on the conspiracy theory site Wikispooks.
A career that began in counterterrorism led him to government investigations, including work on the Senate Watergate Committee, and eventually to private investigations, all of which he says honed his instincts as an executive.
“I’m calm in the eye of the storm,” he said. “A crisis doesn’t faze me. … I confront it, I work on it in a calm fashion.”
He faces a new challenge as the right-hand man of one of New York City’s most ambitious real estate scions, Soloviev Group Chair Stefan Soloviev.
Hershman, who has leeway to control projects with little to no oversight, is being entrusted to spearhead the company’s bid for a casino project. To clinch one of three downstate New York casino licenses, the proposal will have to win public support.
You only live twice
Hershman’s family ran a Long Island-based real estate company, but he followed more clandestine opportunities abroad.
After leaving home to enter the military during the Vietnam War, he ended up in counterterrorism, investigating financial ties between European and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. He’s shy about the details but said he took a bullet infiltrating the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Back stateside, he joined New York City’s Department of Investigation, then worked for a special prosecutor. He was participating in the famous Serpico investigation into corruption in the New York City Police Department when he got a call alerting him to a break-in at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C.
“I’m calm in the eye of the storm. A crisis doesn’t phase me … I confront it, I work on it in a calm fashion.”
“I’ll be back in a week or two,” Hershman thought at the time.
At age 27, Hershman had his first high-profile subject: President Richard Nixon.
From there, he found himself working on a committee investigating the Koreagate scandal, which involved widespread bribery in the U.S. House of Representatives. He later became chief investigator at the Federal Election Commission.
In 1983, he founded Fairfax Group, a private investigation and corporate compliance firm. That would land him in the right place for his second life as a real estate executive.
The spy who loved me
Hershman’s ascent to the top of the Soloviev Group began roughly 30 years ago, when Fairfax was hired to consult for Sheldon Solow’s development company.
“I liked him, I respected him because he was really a visionary in so many different ways,” said Hershman of the late developer and Stefan Soloviev’s father.
They struck up a friendship, and he came to find himself in the billionaire’s inner circle. He got to know Solow’s different personas: the charming, easygoing friend and the notoriously difficult real estate operative.
“He never yelled at me — he wouldn’t do that, because I would have probably knocked him on his ass,” said Hershman. “We just had this unique kind of relationship where he would call me up out of the blue and say, ‘Hey, Michael, what are you doing?’”
Their friendship spared him Solow’s wrath and allowed Hershman a level of candor that few people enjoyed with him.
“If he came up with a dumb idea, I’d say, ‘That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard, Sheldon,’ and he’d laugh,” said Hershman. “Nobody else would ever say that. And from time to time I was successful in stopping him from doing something that would be a mistake. He appreciated that.”
His undiplomatic approach is also appreciated in the new era of the real estate dynasty.
Stefan grew close to Hershman when his father’s associate looked after him during a trip to Russia. Soloviev took over the company in the wake of his father’s death in 2020, and made Hershman CEO the following year.
“I think we work really well together,” said Soloviev. “I have more respect for him than probably any other person.”
“Every morning when I wake up, I check the obituaries, and I did not see my name in there this morning. So if there’s any other questions you have, get back to me.”
Hershman quickly demonstrated his value after Solow’s death by helping Soloviev pay a roughly $2 billion estate tax at a time when the business was “totally illiquid,” according to Soloviev. Hershman helped navigate the complex tax law and other challenges that arose.
“It was a mess, and Michael was a massive part of cleaning that up,” said Soloviev. “It wasn’t all rosy, to inherit that business. I know people don’t understand that.”
Hershman said he encouraged Solow several times to make estate plans, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
“I think he thought that if he started to do serious estate planning it would expose a vulnerability and a fear of death,” he said.
Hershman and Soloviev may seem an odd couple on paper — Soloviev a farmer at heart, and Hershman the most comfortable guy in the boardroom — but they have developed something akin to a father-son dynamic, Hershman said.
“Sometimes I think he looks at me like, ‘Hey, Dad, what am I doing here?’” said Hershman.
Casino royale
Hershman might be direct with Soloviev, but he’s taking a diplomatic approach on the casino proposal, which he says is more than just a casino.
“It is an integrated entertainment district project,” he said, “with the casino as part of it, but not the largest part.”
It may be just one component of the proposal, but the casino is the golden ticket at the heart of the development, which would be built on Soloviev’s 6.7-acre lot in Midtown East. Besides the casino, which would be mostly underground, the proposal calls for two residential towers, a hotel, a park and a democracy museum.
Hershman said he’s had more than 40 meetings with community groups and representatives as well as union leaders. He recently revealed that if the casino license is awarded, the project’s residential component would have over 500 affordable units, one of the largest affordable developments in the neighborhood’s history. Soloviev Group would also donate a part of its profits to a community fund “with no strings attached,” Hershman said.
Residents like the project’s affordable component and green space, according to a Murray Hill Neighborhood Association survey, but the casino plans triggered negative reactions, and community opposition remains.
Community Board 6 opposes the project and insists the company hasn’t been proactive enough in its engagement. Its chair, Kyle Athayde, said the group was made aware of the proposal and subsequent updates through news coverage.
“After more than a decade of ignoring the community, the Soloviev Group has suddenly decided to start beautifying the vacant pit with art exhibits and promising the world to the community, which is so obviously disingenuous,” Athayde said in a statement.
The community board said it is concerned about an increase in traffic and security risks associated with more visitors to the area. They say any development should maintain the neighborhood’s residential character.
Hershman said he’s made several concessions to appease the concerns. There won’t be any entrances on First Avenue, and the casino would bus people directly from Grand Central to cut down on traffic.
“There’s going to be development there whether you like it or not,” he said. “We have the right to build four towers and, under the plans we have approved now, there would be higher traffic volume, less security and less convenience than this improved plan. So they have a choice.”
No time to die
Spry for 78, Hershman retains his title as Fairfax Group president and CEO and occasionally coordinates meetings with clients.
He’s partial to pickleball, in part because he finds it faster than tennis, but he’s had to hang up his paddle for the time being. His responsibilities at Soloviev Group, which range well beyond the casino project, have him working seven days a week.
Free time for reading and dinners with friends have also been casualties of his schedule, which his wife, Marsha Ralls Hershman, says makes him a freak of nature. But he doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
“Every morning when I wake up, I check the obituaries, and I did not see my name in there this morning,” Hershman said in a recent interview. “So if there’s any other questions you have, get back to me.”