A state Supreme Court judge ruled against the co-founders of a boutique New York City-based brokerage in an early test of the allegations pitting the executives against their investors.
Judge Joel Cohen ordered Casa Blanca CEO Hannah Bomze and COO Erez Zarur to provide their investors full access to the company’s financial records and pay $1.3 million into the court. If Bomze and Zarur, who are married, fail to pay that amount, Casa Blanca has the right to put a lien for that amount on their newly purchased apartment.
The decision came in response to a request for a preliminary injunction from investors Samuel Ben-Avraham and Christian Visdomini in their lawsuit against Bomze and Zarur.
Ben-Avraham said in a statement that the decision “speaks for itself” and “reinforces the importance of transparency, proper governance, and fiduciary responsibility.”
After the order was issued, Bomze and Zarur filed a notice that they will be appealing the ruling.
“We anticipate that enforcement of the Order will be stayed and that the Appellate Division will reverse the lower court’s decision,” an attorney for Bomze and Zarur said in a statement, adding that the order is not “a final determination on the merits of the dispute” and the court “has made no finding of fraud or wrongdoing of any kind.”
“I am fully focused on protecting the business,” Bomze said in a statement, adding that the suit came as “powerful financial investors are now engaged in predatory attacks and defamatory smears, attempting to take control of a thriving company by any means necessary, even though they have never worked here or met a single agent.”
Inside the dispute
What began as a dispute over commissions has devolved into a battle over the management of the company between its original founding partners.
The two sides traded lawsuits last year after Bomze initially alleged that she had earned $2.5 million in commissions, of which she was still owed $1.2 million. The investors countered by claiming that Bomze falsified documents to support her claims and had improperly paid herself $1.3 million from company funds to cover part of her alleged commission claims. They also claimed that Zarur would not provide access to the company’s financial records.
In his ruling, Cohen sided with most of the arguments made by Ben-Avraham and Visdomini, saying the relief they were seeking was necessary to protect “the interests of the company and its stakeholders.”
Bomze and Zarur are also restrained from using company funds without written approval to pay Bomze any of the commissions she claims she is owed or any compensation beyond what is contractually obligated. In December, the board — which is made up of the four participants in this case, with Ben-Avraham as a deciding vote — voted to remove Zarur as an officer of the company, a decision the court upheld.
Before the order goes into effect, the two sides still have to hash out how much money Ben-Avraham and Visdomini must put up as a bond to cover potential damages if it’s later determined that the injunction was improperly granted. Ben-Avraham and Visdomini’s lawyer put forward $25,000; Bomze and Zarur’s attorney is asking for $12 million.
Beyond the commissions Bomze claims she’s owed, Ben-Avraham and Visdomini have raised broader concerns in their legal filings about how Bomze and Zarur’s alleged misappropriations have impacted the company’s long-term future.
“Permitting Ms. Bomze and Mr. Zarur to make any further withdrawals creates a risk that the Company could be left in a potentially irreversible position,” the judge wrote in his decision.
The findings
Bomze and Zarur launched Casa Blanca in 2019, backed by a $1.8 million investment from Ben-Avraham. The firm now counts over 200 agents.
The arguments originally stemmed from Bomze’s claim that she is entitled to 100 percent of the sales commissions on transactions she handled personally from 2021 to 2025, which she alleged totaled $2.5 million, of which she had yet to be paid $1.2 million. Bomze also receives a salary of roughly $365,000 and a 0.5 percent bonus of all company commissions.
Bomze has claimed that an independent broker of record agreement signed in August 2019 shows that she is entitled to those commissions, while Ben-Avraham and Visdomini have claimed that Bomze and Zarur backdated the document to provide misleading support for her claims.
The judge noted that while it was “plausible — though not yet proven” that the document was backdated, even if it was authentic, it is likely unenforceable under the company’s operating agreement that requires three-quarters of the company’s board to approve. It is “undisputed” that the agreement was executed without the knowledge or approval of Ben-Avraham and Visdomini, Cohen wrote.
The investors also alleged that Bomze and Zarur breached their fiduciary duty by distributing money to Bomze without notifying them and by using company funds for personal expenses. Cohen said the former argument is likely to succeed, while he wrote that he had not yet seen enough evidence showing Bomze and Zarur had used company funds for personal spending.
In a February hearing for the preliminary injunction, Bomze testified that she loaned roughly $2.5 million in commissions to Casa Blanca as another argument for why she was owed that money, but company financial records showed it was booked as revenue and profit.
Those figures were later included in investor presentations, which means that if Bomze had lent the company money, she and Zarur “likely would be responsible for knowingly misrepresenting the Company’s financial condition to its Managers and to existing and prospective investors,” Cohen wrote.
