CINCINNATI — He's an Israeli military veteran who made a fortune in Cincinnati by unlocking value in multifamily apartment buildings. Now, Stas Grinberg is locked up in a Butler County jail, awaiting federal charges of making false loan statements and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.
The company he co-founded, Vision & Beyond, is mired in one of the most complicated foreclosure cases Hamilton County has seen in decades.
Dozens of lenders, contractors, investors and tenants are fighting over the fate of more than 70 properties where tenants are struggling with utility outages, sewer backups, roof leaks and mold.
"There've been several of these large receivership-type cases in the city of Cincinnati over the past 10 years. What's different about this one is the amount of fraud that's alleged to have occurred," said Nick DiNardo, managing attorney for the housing and consumer practices group at the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati. "What this really means for the tenants in all these properties is that it's taking a long time to get the type of relief that they deserve."
The WCPO 9 I-Team has been researching the collapse of Vision & Beyond because of the impact it's had on tenants, whose pleas for repairs are stuck in limbo because court-appointed receivers lack funding.
"In a normal receivership situation where you just have a lender who's foreclosing on a property, the lender will fund the receiver," DiNardo said. "They want to make sure their asset is maintained so it can be stabilized and eventually sold."
VIDEO: See the latest threat facing tenants in a real estate empire brought down by fraud allegations
But in the five lawsuits now pending over Vision & Beyond, dozens of plaintiffs are fighting over who has priority liens against the properties. Until that's decided, plaintiffs are reluctant to pay for the property management services that receivers provide.
"That's been the real struggle. The only money that the receivers have right now, in some cases, is the rents they're collecting," DiNardo said.
Legal Aid is asking Hamilton County Judge Christian Jenkins to let the largest receiver, Prodigy Properties, borrow enough money to properly manage the roughly 60 properties assigned to it. In the meantime, the city of Cincinnati has hired a plumbing contractor to repair a boiler and evaluate sewer problems at a 116-unit complex in Mt. Airy. Its emergency purchase order could cost the city more than $100,000.
"The tenants have been dealing with backed up water through their sinks, through their tubs and their toilets," said Niara Stitt-White, a staff attorney at Legal Aid. "They can hear the sewage coming back up through the pipes in their home. They don't know if they're going to burst. They have leaks. They have a lot of electrical issues there as well."
Both the receiver and the city could be reimbursed if the buildings are stabilized to the point where they could attract a new owner. But that won't be an easy feat, given that Vision & Beyond has nearly twice as much debt as the value of all of its Hamilton County properties, according to the I-Team's review of 88 properties identified in five pending lawsuits.
The total appraised value of those 88 properties is $23.8 million, according to the Hamilton County Auditor. The total value of all debt recorded against those properties is $46.1 million, according to loan documents on file with the Hamilton County Recorder.
To understand how this could happen, you need to know more about Stanislav "Stas" Grinberg, who emerged as a rising star in Cincinnati's commercial real estate scene in 2021. By that time, he had acquired more than 40 local properties, starting with single-family homes and small rental properties and expanding into larger investments.
Along the way, he became a frequent flyer on real estate podcasts, where he delighted hosts with his background in the Israeli Defense Forces and his frank evaluation of real estate markets.
"On the aspect of ownership, (Cincinnati) is a very, very friendly city," Grinberg told Millionacres Editor Diedre Woollard in a 2021 interview. "It is very welcoming for new businesses to come. The bureaucracy is fairly simple. The tenants' rights are not extreme like they are in other places. It's an eviction-friendly place."
The approach seemed to be working. By 2023, Grinberg claimed to be managing more than 3,100 units of multi-family housing in Cincinnati, Dayton, Louisville, Lexington and Houston. But in 2024, things started to unravel as he fell behind on payments for a pair of loans totaling $36 million.
"Due to the loans being in danger of defaulting, a 'special servicer' was appointed," wrote Nicole Lutz, a U.S. Postal Inspector who filed an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint against Grinberg on March 19. "A special servicer has the power to act on behalf of the note holder, investigate why the loans are in default, and try to get them back on good standing."
Grinberg and his business partner Peter Gizunterman told the special servicer "they had to leave the United States to re-enlist with the Israeli Defense Force to fight in the war in Gaza." That led to a foreclosure filing and a closer look at those 2022 loans. It turned out most of the 60 properties pledged as collateral for the loans were not properly deeded to the limited liability companies that borrowed the money, according to Lutz's affidavit.
Lutz also wrote that "a person involved in V&B's business dealings" told investigators that Grinberg & Gizunterman would "double-pledge" properties to obtain multiple loans, sell properties without the consent of their investors and conspire with closing agents to conceal information from lenders and investors.
Grinberg is the only person charged so far. His defense attorney, Joseph O'Shea, declined comment. Court records indicate he is trying to negotiate a plea agreement.
At the Kirby apartments in Mt. Airy, 10-year tenant Paul Cargile wasn't aware of the pending fraud allegations. Neither was he surprised.
"As you can see, the grass ain't been cut in forever," Cargile said. "When it rains sometimes, it floods. It leaks in my son's room."
Cargile said he didn't want to leave because it was close to his son's elementary school. But now, he's thinking about relocating, with a parting shot for Stas Grinberg.
"Look what you did to us, that's all I got to say. Look what he caused us to have to go through. All for a dollar," said Cargile. "You got a whole bunch of families out here that's going to be struggling for somebody else's greed and money."
