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How Nir Meir’s tough presence and penchant for life helped hide his dark appearance in plain sight
Nir Meir hopes Miami will be a fresh start.
In 2021, the former HFZ executive spent about $2 million renting out a seven-bedroom property on the beach. He spent time there and at ZZ’s, an exclusive members-only social club.
You might see it everywhere. One night I was partying at an absolutely empty strip club in Miami and handing out drinks the next day at the upscale Casa Tua restaurant. He flew to New York City on a personal jet, dropped off thousands of dollars at Daniel’s house, and crashed into the brand. He owned Porsches, an Aston Martin, and several Mercedes. In one month, he spent more than $200,000 on wine.
Behind the scenes, Meir’s life is in chaos. Its eventual downfall devastated HFZ, the company it had helped turn into a leading luxury developer.
Embellishing the fact comes naturally to many real estate developers. Meir went all out. He allegedly lied about his boss having undergone surgery at the center and asked to fake a Korean accessory to deceive investors. He allegedly forged cord transfers and robbed a house.
Those who worked with Meir called him a bully, but he may also be a friend, a confidant, and even a mentor. He lied to the press, even once misleading that cynical, ink-stained journalist who had been covering the fraud for years. It would be charming, seductive. Whatever you seek in life, Meir can provide it.
The story of Meir’s fall from grace is so wild that it goes beyond the industry. In the real estate world, it’s become a morbid fascination for many: it’s the idea that you won’t fall anymore or lie anymore, and then you do. Now he’s in the bars of Rikers Island, awaiting trial for allegedly orchestrating an $86 million, multi-year fraud. The charges include theft, tax evasion, forgery of business documents, and cash laundering. But until the law held firm in February, you may have seen it in Carbone.
A source called Rasputin from Meir Real Estate. I came out of nowhere and rose through the ranks, promising cures but offering venom. He seemed invincible, surviving attempts to bring him down while retaining the ability to topple a billionaire. company, his partner, contractors, and his wife. Through it all, it did: HFZ lost its flagship condo progression on the High Line, the XI, in the biggest developer implosion in the Covid-era. But Meir’s story is rarely as undeniable as a rise and fall. Power, for Meir, wasn’t about building a gleaming apartment. His dream was that they would never say no.
Even in his first criminal court appearance recently, Meir lied. Hunched over, with dark circles under his eyes, he told a judge that he was the sole breadwinner for his family. A few weeks earlier, he had filed for bankruptcy, claiming $50. in its call and without a source of income.
In real estate, developers revel in explosions and bankruptcies, distorting the truth, and moving money from one task to another, in an effort to pay investors and banks. Sometimes, they get caught in the middle of a maneuver.
But for Meir, the game went much further. Those stuck on their internet are now trying to figure out how they played it and why.
Meir was born in Israel in 1975. No one knows exactly where.
He said he went to college in France, dropped out, moved to the United States and became a runner. Meir was renting apartments to corporate tenants in Manhattan when she met Ziel Feldman around 2003 and hung in there. Meir joined New Feldman and Kevin Maloney’s York-based progression firm, Property Markets Group.
In 2006, Feldman invested in a mega-allocation in Jerusalem known as the Holy Land, which became the center of a corruption scandal that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. When the assignment failed, Feldman asked Meir, a local Hebrew speaker, for help.
When Feldman introduced HFZ Capital Group, he took Meir with him. Meir had a knack for numbers and an unparalleled ability to attract investors, the resources said.
“We used to joke, a loan was coming up and Nir would take the next plane and come back with a bag full of money,” said a former HFZ employee.
Short, muscular and with a defined jawline, Meir had an intimidating presence at HFZ’s Madison Avenue offices. Feldman eventually named him director.
“He was running around on the phone, yelling at people,” Feldman’s aide said in a statement.
“I can’t express enough the strength he had over me and the rest of the people in the office,” she added. “It’s hard unless you’ve met him, spent time with him. “
At times, Meir is friendly. For others, it’s frantic.
Send quick emails and texts.
“Satisfy me. “
“I want to talk. “
“Two minutes. “
Meir didn’t give the impression of being a man in charge. One day, an associate in Beny Steinmetz’s corporations emailed a lawyer connected to XI to tell him that Meir “was worried. “
The lawyer replied, “Nir is worried. “
Meir’s feelings were about to change. When a contractor called to ask for tens of millions of dollars for a finished job, Meir would first scream and then beg. By the end of the conversation, the two men were becoming friends and laughing about all the money they had earned, a former worker said. .
“It’s one crazy phone call after another crazy phone call,” the former worker said.
For a while, HFZ was the go-to company in New York real estate. The Daily News called Feldman “the modern-day John Jacob Astor. “The company has carved out a niche for itself by converting and restoring historic landmarks into swanky condominiums. The projects (Belnord, Astor, Chatsworth) appealed to the blue-blooded, a clientele that was not attracted to the glass and metal towers of Billionaires’ Row.
Meir, from Israel, and Feldman, from Queens, were of this world. They had no generational wealth. Meir idolized Napoleon and the American robber barons: the conquistadors.
Meir lived to impress others, especially those who already possessed everything. Israeli car tycoon and HFZ investor Yoav Harlap recalled showing up at his home in Israel in a smart suit.
“I thought about how crazy it was to come to Israel in a three-piece suit,” Harlap said in a statement. “It was completely out of place. “
Real estate was the best position for Meir. It’s a backroom affair and finery to get noticed and noticed. Condos are purchased through unnamed shell corporations in Delaware. Profit and loss accounts can be manipulated to obtain larger loans. The grades are a joke. There is no disclosure requirement. As an investor, you want to accept it as true with the developer. If you get screwed, too bad. Sue, but you’ll probably still lose.
In this dark world, Meir seemed to be in his element. Perhaps it will convince the rich and strong of the world that investing in HFZ is a matter of prestige. But once the investment was secured, their plans didn’t last. The projects lacked money, even though Meir never seemed to.
He was the go-to user of Steinmetz, one of Israel’s richest men and one of the biggest backers of the HFZ. (Steinmetz had raised $500 million in mining rights in the mountains of Guinea. A Swiss court later found that he had bribed high-ranking officials there. )
For years, HFZ denied that Steinmetz was involved in the project, but in 2021, The Real Deal published a chart showing that it owned 60% of Belnord.
It’s low to lie to a journalist. But lying to lenders and lenders is illegal.
Meir took $65 million from HFZ projects to cover shortfalls in other HFZ buildings and fill the wallets of HFZ executives, the Manhattan district attorney claims in an indictment. He will be the first to borrow from Peter to repay Paul in a frantic race to bring his plans.
But Feldman believes Meir kept a lot: $11 million from a private American Express card that the company returned and $30 million from a cash-out refinance in Chicago.
It wasn’t just an alleged robbery. Projects were undercapitalized. Meir has postponed the problems, relying on constant activity to keep the flow of investment tranches.
HFZ bought 76 11th Avenue, the site of XI, for $870 million, the highest amount ever paid for land in New York City. Designed by architect stylist Bjarke Ingels, the commission was intended to be HFZ’s masterpiece. Its two towers would curve over the High Line like an optical illusion.
The Children’s Investment Fund lent $1. 3 billion to XI in 2017. Meir allegedly embezzled about $253 million over a four-year period, asking accountants to falsify money statements, and contractors and subcontractors were left with a $37 million deficit.
At NoMad, Meir allegedly transferred $107 million intended to fund a 34-story work tower to other HFZ projects and to the accounts of HFZ executives. At the maturity date, HFZ left a deficit of $24 million.
Meir also allegedly ordered HFZ’s accountants to pay $15 million in taxes on the assets.
Outside of New York, Meir is even more brazen. In 2017, an investor invested $5 million in an asset in San Francisco. Meir sent out fake leaflets and let the progress of the project appear, according to the prosecutor. But HFZ never acquired the progress rights.
A former worker asked why prosecutors focused on only a few HFZ projects when Meir was moving cash from everywhere.
Maybe Meir is bad at business. A Saudi investor in Chatsworth has sounded the alarm after failing to secure a distribution despite a refinancing. Meir never finished a montage on the Upper East Side.
From time to time, contractors, including Omnibuild, threatened to abandon the sites, but Meir paid them just enough to return. The lawsuits show that investors were promised condos at the Astor and projects that were never delivered.
The most sensible thing about all this is that Meir was constantly asking his friends for new loans and presenting himself as the savior of the HFZ.
“He was yelling at me that without him, the company wouldn’t do it because he was just making an investment in his call to keep it afloat,” Feldman said in a statement.
When the pandemic hit, the XI came to a halt, revealing the tangle of Meir’s relationships.
Lenders CIM Group and Starwood threatened to foreclose on other HFZ projects, so Meir sent fake bank transaction confirmation numbers to buy time, according to the lawsuits. A check for $750,000 addressed to an investor was rejected, according to court documents.
He’s reckless. In September 2020, Meir secured a $30 million loan from Wix co-founder Avi Abrahami, pledging a portfolio of commercial homes as collateral. But Meir did not tell Abrahami that the same houses were insuring a $43 million debt to Monroe Capital, which had made a $113 million corporate loan, according to the filings.
Monroe’s business loan is secured by interest on most of HFZ’s properties. It’s the debt that could put an end to HFZ.
Feldman said he learned of Abrahami’s loan in late 2020 and confronted Meir.
“He went crazy,” Feldman said in a statement. He said, ‘I’m here to save the business, it’s a wonderful loan they gave me and I didn’t want to tell you. ‘
“We found out where all the cash was going. Four million went to him personally. I called out to him, screaming and crying in front of my son, “What the fuck did you do?”And then he said, ‘What are you talking about?'” I borrowed that money from friends to keep the business afloat and now I’m paying them back. “»
According to Feldman, Meir is just a villain, he’s a sociopath. His workplace habit for all those years wasn’t just genuine braggadocio. Meir can simply read feelings and cast a spell on people.
Isolating employees, saying one thing to one user and the opposite to others. To give the impression that HFZ is in good health, it created false financial statements with the help of the CFO.
Not everyone accepts Feldman’s story of victimization. How is it possible that Feldman is so ignorant? He should have known, they suggest. But Feldman argues that Meir is underestimated.
“Four percent of the population are sociopaths,” he said in a statement. “Several years ago there was a movie called ‘The Undoing,’ starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. So she threw her son under a bus to avoid going to jail. Nir is at the highest level.
When asked if Nir had been diagnosed, Feldman replied, “You’d have to go to the doctor to get a diagnosis. Maybe when he’s in prison, he’ll get a diagnosis. “
Meir can be contacted through her court-appointed attorney. Feldman declined to comment for this article.
In December 2020, Feldman fired Meir. The XI was closed in 2021.
Many families moved to Miami in 2021, including Meir’s.
His wife, Ranee Bartolacci, thought it was a lifestyle choice.
Bartolacci, whose relatives owned a beloved supermarket chain in Pennsylvania, got engaged to Meir in 2008, on Christmas Eve in Paris. They married a year later at the Plaza in New York City.
Meir had other reasons for this decision. He had known for at least a year the trouble that awaited him and acted to protect himself.
He lacked equity in HFZ, so for cash he transferred HFZ-owned space in Southampton where he lived in his name, allegedly exchanging documents to do so. He then sold it for $43 million. When a creditor sought the proceeds of an $18 million judgment, Meir’s lawyers said the space was not yet his and his wife’s. The court legalized access to a judgment contrary to Bartolacci.
Meir is also elusive outside the courtroom. Spotting a paperwork server, he sped away, turning and zigzagging through the parking lots. Another waiter claimed that Meir tried to run him over.
“He insulted me and yelled at me,” one of them said in an affidavit. “The guy’s crazy. “
Meanwhile, frustrated creditors watched cash trickle in and out of the accounts: from a Delaware bank that specializes in asset protection, to Qatar, to buy $1. 6 million worth of gold. Princely sums were wasted on fine wines, personal planes, yachts, and hotel stays. and strip clubs in Miami, E11EVEN and Gold Rush Cabaret.
Meir was found guilty of contempt of court for taking cash from a blocked account flight. A New York judge called his tactic a “game of chimeras. “
At the beginning of 2023, Meir’s expenses caught up with him. He and Bartolacci were evicted from their rented mansion in Miami.
Bartolacci moved into his parents’ space and, according to his account, tried to make sense of what had happened. She studied her husband’s legal disorders and learned of the ruling against him over the Southampton space.
Eventually, Bartolacci messaged Meir about his findings, but he dismissed them.
“The judges did not order or point to any contempt order that was opposed because they did not provide evidence to support it,” he responded.
Text after text, Meir asked Bartolacci to call him or his lawyer, Larry Hutcher. When she didn’t respond, Meir became erratic.
“At the end of the day, take charge and take care of all the craziness and tension I face on a daily basis. Good luck,” he wrote.
Bartolacci had heard enough. She filed for divorce. Meir lives in fancy hotels.
Meir had lied to The Real Deal over the years about HFZ and its litigation. Their requests to delay the publication of articles have become tedious. Sources have warned that it is incomplete, or worse. Feldman concluded that Meir is either a sociopath or some kind of Svengali. He claimed he was a criminal.
This reporter didn’t find it convincing and never saw the charm that attracted others.
About a year ago, after the Miami Beach eviction, he called. His circle of relatives had not been expelled, he said; Instead, the landlord had violated his lease due to a collapsed levee. She sent photographs of a rape note posted in the front of her home.
He spoke temporarily, but also calmly. He requested an email sent to his attorney for more documents; The email disappeared. He later said it was an app and deserved to have been tried separately. This follow-up has also been published.
Journalists try not to be gullible, even in the small things, but its mystical effect. When you’re with Meir, her truth becomes the truth. His tone of conviction draws you in.
On Feb. 5, four days after Meir filed for bankruptcy, Miami Beach police officers showed up at Hotel 1.
Just before his arrest, Meir texted genuine realtors to apply for loans of $15,000 or $25,000. Before Hotel 1, I lived at the Four Seasons in Surfside. Meir was rumored to be dating a woman who was divorcing and persuaded her to leave him. Sell your diamond ring.
D. A. Il It took him a week to gain custody of Meir, who had not turned himself in after the charges against him were announced. Meir pleaded not guilty to his arrest and at his bail hearing in New York, he pleaded not guilty.
In the audience he looked frail, as if he were 15 years old, but with the same dark, icy eyes. Her clothes were too big for her. In a soft voice, he asked the judge if the guards could remove his handcuffs so he could speak.
He only ran into the monetary upheavals of Covid, Meir said. He asked if he could schedule court visits instead of having to post bail.
The sentencing ruling denied his application. The fog of Rasputin has evaporated. The force is gone, for now. The ruling ruled that bail was set at $5 million in cash, which Meir has yet to pay.
Meir stood firm in his lies, even if they now seemed more mundane, such as spending the day in court.
“I’m a 49-year-old man, I’ve never had a record, I’ve never been arrested,” he said. “I’ve been a righteous citizen all my life. “