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 guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman
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