Con men duped investor into paying for condo: suit
New York Post
By Julia Marsh
09 May 2017

153 Bowery   Google Maps

Two Manhattan men conned an Italian investor into paying nearly $2 million for a Lower East Side condo with the promise that they’d flip the unit—but instead one of the alleged scammers used the luxury pad as a free place to crash, according to a new lawsuit.

Italian Piero Loiero hired Touraj Naghieh and Francesco Belcaro of Capital Realty Investors in 2012 to scout investment properties, his Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.

Naghieh and Belcaro found a loft at 153 Bowery that they claimed they could renovate and resell within 18 months at a profit, the suit says.

Loiero bought the two-bedroom for $1.84 million in October 2013. A year later Loiero asked another broker for a second opinion about the marketability of the condo, but Nagheih refused to give him access claiming that a pregnant woman was renting out the pad, the suit says.

Loiero only learned this year — when the duo claimed they were still working on renovating the apartment four years after the purchase — that Naghieh had been residing in the condo, the suit says.

A real tenant would have paid $8,500-a-month for the unit, according to court papers. Loiero is suing for the $102,000 in lost rent plus other damages.

Ken Sussmane, attorney for Naghieh and Belcaro, said that everything regarding the condo “was done with the full knowledge and consent” of Loiero.

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