Mauricio Umansky is being sued for allegedly obtaining more than $3.5 million in fraudulent pandemic relief loans.
According to InTouch, Realtor LLC claimed in its July 2023 complaint that Umansky, 54, and his business partner, William “Billy” Rose, via their luxury real estate firm, The Agency, applied for and received two Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and CARES Act loans totaling $3,521,153.
The programs were created during the COVID-19 pandemic to help prevent the termination of employees by providing loans to businesses that were unable to pay their workers.
Realtor LLC alleged in its filing that The Agency — which was showcased on the recently canceled Netflix reality show “Buying Beverly Hills” — was among the many “large, profitable” companies that obtained their pandemic loans by “misrepresenting their financial situations, claiming their businesses were eligible when they were not, or … misrepresenting how the funds would be used.”
The lawsuit alleged that Umansky and Rose “falsely certified that ‘current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations'” of The Agency.
“In addition, the amounts they applied for and received exceeded the loan limit of 2.5 monthly salary with a cap of $100,000 annual salary per employee,” the complaint claimed, adding that the men “later applied for and received full loan forgiveness, knowing they were ineligible for the loans in the first place.”
The filing argued that The Agency’s profits “would have been minimally impacted, if at all, because their revenue was based on a percentage of real estate transactions, typically between millionaires and billionaires, not consumers who were unable to buy goods or dine out because of the COVID-19 restrictions.”
In fact, the suit claimed that the firm’s “business grew massively” during the pandemic, as it had $6 billion in sales volume in 2019, which rose to $6.5 billion in 2020 and “ballooned to $11.2 billion in 2021.”
Realtor LLC argued in its complaint that the allegedly fraudulently received loans “only bolstered defendants’ profits.”
A rep for The Agency denied the allegations in the suit, telling Page Six, “The claims in this case do not reflect the reality of our operations and financial situation at the time we filed for our PPP loans, and we intend to vigorously defend against these meritless claims.”
The rep went on to say that “The Agency has always operated with the highest level of integrity in all aspects of our business” and insisted the company “faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, including layoffs and cutbacks.”
