Thread by @reveal

1/ New investigation: A small-time scam artist deeded @realdonaldtrump a $10.3 million Beverly Hills mansion for $0.

People involved in the deal say it was all a mistake. Real estate experts say it doesn’t make sense.

Here’s what we know ... revealnews.org/article/a-smal…

2/ Back in 2008, an Egyptian man named Mokless Girgis bought a Beverly Hills mansion, next door to Trump’s home and across the street from The Beverly Hills Hotel.

The Rodeo Drive home had six bedrooms, six bathrooms and a half-acre lot with a pool, spa and tennis court.

3/ Six weeks later, Girgis deeded over the property to an LLC owned by Donald Trump.

Trump held the property for less than a year, then sold it for $9.5 million – completing what, on paper at least, appears to be the best real estate deal Trump ever made.

4/ Reporters @LanceWCIR and @SFMattSmith uncovered the deal using public real estate records in Los Angeles County.

They then began calling the people involved in the deal and consulting experts to figure out what happened. Here’s what they found …

5/ The people involved in the deal say it was a mistake. Girgis claimed in a filing with L.A. County that his name was accidentally put on the deed. He corrected the error, he says, by writing in the name of a Trump corporation on a new deed. That’s why no money changed hands.

6/ Igor Korbatov handled the sale for his in-laws, Leonard and Selma Fisch.

He told us Girgis was close to buying the property but the deal fell through. The paperwork was filed away.

7/ Some time passed. And when Trump bought the house, someone accidentally grabbed the deed that had been prepared for Girgis and filed it.

8/ First American Title wouldn’t talk to us to explain the deal. It only sent a short email: “It appears from our records that the error was completely our responsibility.”

9/ In other words: a $10.3 million clerical error. An error in which a multimillion-dollar home was deeded to the wrong buyer and no one noticed.

10/ We took the details of the deal to five separate attorneys who do luxury real estate. They said they’d never heard of anything like this happening before.

11/ The sale of a luxury home typically involves brokers, notaries, lawyers and agents for title and escrow. With all that scrutiny, how could everyone fail to see the wrong name was on the deed?

12/ The experts didn’t understand why the sellers would sign their names to a deed giving the house to Mokless Girgis before he put up the money to buy the house.

13/ More than anything else, though, it was Girgis’ presence in the deal that raised red flags.

How did a preacher with a $48k salary become a prospective buyer at all? High-end real estate companies vet net worth of prospective buyers before even showing them luxury homes.

14/ Girgis was the pastor of a 15-member Baptist church. He also claimed to have big business plans in the works, and that he was a big-time pop star in Egypt.

He left a trail of unpaid bills, unhappy investors and claims of fraud behind him.

15/ We tried to track Girgis down in the United States, Belgium and Egypt. But we had no luck.

Creditors here thought he was abroad. A nonprofit he worked with in Belgium said they were looking for him, too.

16/ The Trump Organization declined to comment. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, handled the deals. He didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

17/ Cohen’s office was raided by the FBI this week in connection with special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation.
nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/…

18/ For more, listen to @al_letson talk through the deal with @lancewcir and @sfmattsmith on our podcast: revealnews.org/episodes/trump…