Civil claims against owner of Harrison's Heights Plaza exceed $700K

Civil claims totaling more than $700,000 have been filed against the owner of Heights Plaza in Harrison.

Pretium Property Management, the plaza’s court-appointed receiver, claimed in a civil complaint filed last month that Wild Blue Management, Indigo Management and Steve Kogut, all of Far Hills, N.J., fraudulently transferred nearly $650,000 in rent payments from plaza tenants.

Some of the money went toward rent payments on a Manhattan apartment totaling $17,000 a month, while other money went to Tulane University in New Orleans, a San Francisco-based cryptocurrency business and other entities, according to Pretium’s complaint in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

Separately, Harrison-based contractor Ron Gillette Inc. claims that Wild Blue and Indigo owe it more than $55,000 for work it did at the plaza.

According to Gillette’s complaint, Wild Blue owns the plaza, while Indigo was the management company hired by Wild Blue to manage it.

Pretium, based in White Plains, N.Y., has been in control of the plaza and its operations since being appointed receiver in October 2018.

Attorneys representing Pretium and Wild Blue did not respond to requests for comment.

In its complaint, Pretium said it discovered what it called fraudulent transfers while reviewing Wild Blue’s financial records. It is asking the court to void the transfers and order the recipients of the money to return it to Pretium or, if the money can’t be recovered from the recipients, for Indigo and Kogut to do so.

Transfers from Wild Blue that were identified in Pretium’s complaint included:

• $280,439, from Jan. 17, 2017, to Dec. 17, 2018, to Specialized Loan Servicing.

• $135,481, from Jan. 9, 2017, to Oct. 16, 2018, to Capital One Financial.

• $119,000, in seven transfers from Jan. 4, 2017, to July 3, 2017, to a woman for rent of an apartment in Manhattan’s West Village.

• $60,741, from Feb. 1, 2017, to May 31, 2018 to Tulane University.

• $31,558, from Nov. 13, 2017, to Dec. 20, 2017, to Coinbase, a platform to buy, sell and store cryptocurrency where Kogut and/or Indigo have an account but Wild Blue does not.

• $13,674, from Feb. 17, 2017, to Dec. 3, 2018, to American Express.

• $8,707, from June 25, 2018, to Dec. 4, 2018, to Barclays Bank Delaware.

Indigo and Kogut were in control of Wild Blue’s funds when the transfers were made, the complaint states.

In its complaint, Pretium claims there was never any relationship, financial or otherwise, between Wild Blue and any of the seven transfer recipients, and that Wild Blue was insolvent when the money was transferred or it became insolvent as a result of the transfers.

In Gillette’s complaint, the company said it had written contracts with Wild Blue for paving and snow removal and verbal agreements for other work.

Gillette said it is owed:

• $17,150 for paving a loading dock.

• $16,101 for pothole and asphalt patch work, catch basin repair and cleaning and installing plates or grates.

• $11,060 for repairing a sewer line.

• $10,333 for snow removal for the 2016-17 season.

• $1,170 for street sweeping.

An attorney for Gillette did not respond to request for comment.

Heights Plaza Partners LLC filed a mortgage foreclosure-related complaint against Wild Blue in August 2018, accusing it of defaulting on a $16.25 million loan by failing to repay the principal and interest owed by its maturity date in May of that year.

Heights Plaza Partners claimed it also is owed nearly $5 million in outstanding interest and about $439,000 in attorney’s fees and costs, for a total of about $21.6 million.

An Allegheny County Common Pleas judge entered a foreclosure order against Wild Blue in September. Wild Blue is appealing the foreclosure decision to Superior Court.

Court records show Heights Plaza Partners asked the court to reject the appeal. The request was denied.