Michael Cohen’s Mysterious Manhattan Real Estate Deals Raise Eyebrows
Michael Cohen Image by Getty Images
By Nathan Guttman October 26, 2017
Updated, October 28 3:52p.m.
President Trump’s lawyer and close confidant Michael Cohen has taken a page from his boss’s book in making money off New York real estate – buy low and sell high.
But not all is clear about Cohen’s buying and selling.
A McClatchy investigation published Thursday found four deals that “raised red flags for several experts” who reviewed them. In one case, Cohen bought a small Lower East Side apartment building for $2 million and sold it three years later for $10 million. The assessed value of the building did not increase at this time. The identity of the buyer is not known. In three other cases there was a similar pattern of sale to an LLC whose owners remained anonymous.
Cohen said the buyer of all properties “is a New York real estate family fund that has been around for almost a century” and that the purchase was made in cash for tax deferral purposes.
Jaimie Nawaday, a former federal prosecutor, told McClatchy that “An all cash purchase by an LLC of an overvalued property in Manhattan is usually worth a closer look by federal investigators.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
