D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced a lawsuit Thursday against a family of landlords with thousands of code violations and millions of dollars in fines associated with their names and companies.
The lawsuit names two brothers, Ali “Sam” Razjooyan and Eimon “Ray” Razjooyan, and their mother, Houri Razjooyan, and alleges the family is running a “slumlord empire.”
According to the suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the family has acquired over the past decade more than 70 apartment buildings in D.C., many of them rent-controlled.
In what Schwalb’s office described as a Ponzi-like scheme, the family deceives lenders with fake financials and false promises to renovate the buildings, then rents them to tenants who receive housing subsidies reliably paid by D.C. government.
Instead of fixing up the buildings, the lawsuit accuses the Razjooyans of using the loan proceeds to enrich themselves, pay off loans for previous building purchases and buy new properties — all while their buildings fall into disrepair and their tenants endure horrific conditions.
“Unfortunately, the District is home to some bad actors — slumlords who seek to profit off the city’s housing crisis, bad actors who want to take advantage of vulnerable D.C. residents, forcing them to live in horrible conditions while lining their own pockets,” Schwalb said.
Schwalb referred to the lawsuit as the first of its kind, using RICO and two other D.C. statutes, the False Claims Act and the Consumer Protection Procedures Act, to go after the Razjooyans’ entire operation.
“We have uncovered evidence of a sprawling illegal enterprise — a complex web of shell LLCs, unlicensed property management and construction companies, illegal, unpermitted construction work and straw purchasers, all designed to allow the Razjooyans to conceal the true ownership and condition of the properties, to defraud lenders and to take advantage of the District’s affordable housing subsidy programs.”
According to the lawsuit, the Razjooyans have defrauded the city of about $16 million while buying more than 70 apartment buildings — 90% of them in Wards 7 and 8 — that span 44 different complexes.
An email sent to an address associated with Sam Razjooyan bounced back when WTOP reached out for comment.
“To this day, the apartments suffer from mold, mice, rats, broken windows and doors and locks and other deplorable conditions,” said Megan Browder, a lawyer with Legal Aid D.C. who has been going after the Razjooyans for years. “Legal Aid represents several clients who have been forced to choose between homelessness and living in squalor.”
Schwalb’s office said many of the properties are unlivable and condemned, and increasingly empty.
“Many of the properties are abandoned now,” Schwalb said. “Nobody’s living in them, which causes a whole suite of other problems for us, and most acutely, has reduced the available housing stock we have, when we need more places for people to live in the District to try to address the affordable housing challenge.”
One of the suit’s ultimate goals, Schwalb said, is “to eliminate their entire ability to operate in the District.”
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