Lakewood’s Eli Puretz talks fraud

Eli Puretz wants others to avoid the mistake he made.

Puretz, a 29-year-old real estate investor, faces a five-year prison sentence for his role in a multimillion-dollar commercial mortgage fraud scheme.

Puretz pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud this summer. His father and co-conspirator, Aron Puretz, was sentenced this month to the maximum five years in prison.

But young Puretz surprisingly decided to speak openly about his crime with David Lichtenstein of the Lightstone Group on his podcast, Halacha Titles.

Lawyers generally advise people awaiting criminal sentencing to avoid talking about their alleged crimes; Puretz, however, offered a rare insight into what drove him to commit fraud.

Eli Puretz said the fraudulent transaction that ultimately led the DOJ to file charges against him was his first major real estate transaction.

“I rode and treated like a Bachur (Hebrew for single young man) who is coming out of yeshiva and is aggressively looking into real estate deals,” Puretz said.

Puretz said he would normally look to broker deals, but he saw an opportunity to “flip” a property. The purpose of the fake flip was to buy and sell a property with no equity. Puretz, 24 years old at the time, claimed to have been advised by other people more experienced than him.

Puretz, along with his father and Boruch Drillman, purchased an office complex outside Detroit for $42.7 million in 2020, but presented a false sales price to a lender of $70 million. The lender used this inflated price to give the co-conspirators a $45 million loan, a larger loan than they otherwise would have received. Riverside Abstract, a title insurer based in Lakewood, New Jersey, conducted two closings, one for the actual transaction and one for the inflated sale price.

“In my first real estate transaction, which was quite large for someone my age, I committed something that was black and white bank fraud,” Puretz said.

“It is highly unusual for a defendant, particularly in the vulnerable period between plea and sentencing, to speak publicly about his wrongdoings,” said Sarah Krissoff, Eli Puretz’s attorney. “I am proud that Eli had the courage to come forward to dissuade other young people from going down the wrong path.”

On the podcast, Lichtenstein asked Puretz why he committed this act. Puretz highlighted his upbringing, noting that young men in his community are graduating from the yeshiva system and seeking instant success in nursing homes or real estate.

“They find themselves moving from the yeshiva world to the bigger leagues at a very rapid pace…and view that as the barometer of success,” Puretz said.

Puretz said many of his discussions with his friends “sitting around the campfire” were about certain community members who had accumulated a lot of nursing homes or real estate in a short period of time.

“Your judgment was clouded by everyone around you making big movements around you so quickly and so easily,” Puretz said. We are led to think, he says, that “there must be something easy here.”

Puretz continued: “You see people as young as me who joined the nursing home industry 24 months ago and today they sit in 50 nursing homes. All this clouds your judgment. This makes it seem very kosher to deal with some gray areas.

Puretz did not mention during the podcast that his co-conspirator was his father. He also didn’t mention that his family’s businesses have been accused of operating as slumlords across the country.

Eli Puretz also found himself embroiled in another civil court suit with a former partner, Moshe Rothman, who sued him for $21 million. In that lawsuit, Rothman alleges that Puretz was responsible for acquisitions for Apex Equity Group, the real estate company run by Aron Puretz. (Eli Puretz denied Rothman’s allegations in the lawsuit.)

The podcast interview took a detour into other schemes, involving credit card points. Puretz said he recently attended a hearing where someone was convicted of illegally using the points.

“Half of BMG (Beth Medrash Govoha Yeshiva in Lakewood) does things with credit cards,” Puretz said. “Some of them are kosher and some of them are not.”

Puretz said once he made his first real estate transaction, it was an instant rush.

“It’s a drug. You get a taste of money and real estate dealing at a very fast pace.

He said it was hard to shake that feeling and suggested that if he hadn’t been blamed for the Troy Technology deal, he might have buried himself deeper and found himself in a worse situation later in his life.

“I’m almost relieved that I’ve been hit with what I’m facing,” Puretz said.

Lichtenstein noted that he has taught classes on real estate modeling to students like Puretz.

Puretz acknowledged that he took Lichtenstein’s classes and was eager to learn more about real estate. He said interest and ambition to learn is not the problem, but rather the lack of good mentoring.

“Most of us are mentored by the drivers and dealers, who (sic) don’t necessarily mentor us in the right way,” Puretz said.

“Most of us are dealing with people who are perfectly fine with bending truths and legalities and those (deals) are not very gray, but slightly gray. And from light gray to dark gray, it goes very quickly.

Learn more

DOJ seeks to indict Lakewood investor Eli Puretz for mortgage fraud

Judge goes after Lakewood investor Aron Puretz during sentencing

Philadelphia residential complex caught in Puretz mortgage scam sold