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, through their luxury real estate firm, The Agency, applied for and received two Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and CARES Act loans totaling $3,521,153.
The program was designed to help prevent employee terminations by providing loans to businesses unable to pay their workers due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit accused Umansky’s company of “falsely” certifying their need for the loans to pay their employees.
Realtor LLC alleged in its filing that The Agency — which was showcased on the recently canceled Netflix reality show Buying Beverly Hills — was among 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.”
“In addition, the amounts they applied for and received exceeded the loan limit of 2.5 times 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.”
