Broker Natanel Malkoukian left Nest Seekers for a shot at building his own new development marketing company. But his departure earlier this year followed a rocky few months at the brokerage and is now the center of an $11 million lawsuit filed by the firm.
The move followed a lawsuit that Malkoukian, who is Orthodox Jewish, filed against the brokerage in April, accusing Nest Seekers broker Michael Bethoney and CEO Eddie Shapiro of religious discrimination, bullying and retaliation.
Three months later, Nest Seekers sued Malkoukian, claiming he breached his employment contract and stole clients, employees, confidential information and commission payments from the firm when he departed in June.
Malkoukian, who denied the firm’s claims, said the brokerage only filed the lawsuit as a scare tactic.
“[The lawsuit] is more to put fear in our eyes,” Malkoukian said. “It’s Eddie Shapiro.”
A spokesperson for Nest Seekers declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a company policy prohibiting discussion of pending legal matters.
The brokerage filed the suit on June 27, eight days after Malkoukian left the company. Nest Seekers is requesting $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.
The complaint also names as defendants Malkoukian’s new venture, Reavis Real Estate Group, and other members, including former Nest Seekers agent Yitzchak Khaimov, Malkoukian’s brother David and agent Jonathan Anobian.
In the lawsuit, Nest Seekers claims Malkoukian and others coached the firm’s developer clients on how to subvert their exclusive listing agreements with the brokerage in violation of the non-solicitation clause in their contracts.
The complaint also alleges the defendants stole more than $200,000 in commission payments and redirected them to their company by “forging signatures on documents, fabricating documents, and making misrepresentations to these developers to send the checks directly to them rather than [Nest Seekers].”
Nest Seekers also claimed Malkoukian and Khaimov forwarded “confidential contracts, renderings, photos, videos, pitch decks, trade secrets and other documents and marketing materials” to their personal email addresses and tried to “conceal their misdeeds” by deleting the emails from their company account.
In Malkoukian’s lawsuit, the broker alleged Bethoney “threatened and bullied” him, including remarking that he “barely works” regarding his observance of the Sabbath and Jewish holidays as well as “yelling and screaming, spitting, and clenching his fist, to the extent that [Malkoukian] felt physically threatened.” The suit also alleged Bethoney has a “history of harassing women agents and employees… because they are women.”
The complaint alleged that when Malkoukian complained about Bethoney’s behavior, Shapiro told him Bethoney would be fired but later changed his mind because of Bethoney’s relationship with Nest Seekers’ developer clients.
The broker claimed Bethoney removed him from projects and denied him $1.5 million in commissions after that conversation with Shapiro.
Nest Seekers’ complaint references Malkoukian’s April lawsuit, referring to the legal action as “frivolous” as it made claims of religious discrimination “even though Bethoney is Jewish and Nest Seekers was founded and is owned by observant Jews, one of whom was born in Israel and had his children’s Bar Mitzvah at the Wailing Wall.”
Malkoukian’s lawsuit also alleges that while Khaimov, also an Orthodox Jewish man, was at Nest Seekers, he also faced similar discriminatory conduct because of his religion.
Nest Seekers dismissed those claims in its June complaint, arguing that “Yitzhcak echoed similar complaints as a smokescreen” in order to “[implement] their fraudulent unlawful scheme.”
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Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified former Nest Seekers agent Yitzchak Khaimov, Malkoukian’s brother David and agent Jonathan Anobian as founding members of Reavis Real Estate Group.