A real estate investor with ties to embattled attorney and dealmaker Mark Nussbaum is waving the white flag after getting hit with a barrage of lawsuits and foreclosures.
Monsey, New York-based investor Jacob Tauber rapidly assembled a portfolio of office and mixed-use commercial properties in Newark, New Jersey, between 2018 and 2019, before moving on to Chicago to do business with his father and Nussbaum. But Tauber filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy twice in the last year, claiming to have $119 million in liabilities from unsecured debts and legal judgments including foreclosures against his New Jersey real estate portfolio.
At the same time, a portfolio of South Side Chicago multifamily buildings tied to him, his father Eli Tauber and Nussbaum, is also facing a tidal wave of foreclosure complaints.
Jacob Tauber’s November bankruptcy filing lists his income as $25,000 per month and his personal assets as $3 million in value. He also agreed to forfeit a $32,000 Piaget watch and his father has paid for $27,500 in legal fees on his behalf, according to the filing.
Multi-state distress
The bankruptcy is halting foreclosures on most of Jacob Tauber’s rental homes in Airmont, New York, and his Newark, New Jersey, commercial properties. But it does not appear to have impacted the ongoing Chicago foreclosures because his father’s name is on the deeds and mortgages associated with the properties.
Though Jacob Tauber’s name does not appear on property records tied to the Chicago properties, other documentation points to his involvement with the buildings.
Eli Tauber and Nussbaum, who is both an attorney and investor, bought a slew of Chicago multifamily properties through their company, Straightline Management. Jacob Tauber is also involved with Straightline, according to people familiar with the investors.
His name also comes up in separate legal filings involving Nussbaum, who mentioned he does not know the exact state of his Chicago properties but that some of his real estate with the younger Tauber had been sold or transferred.
Lenders in Chicago have filed at least 33 foreclosures against LLCs controlled or managed by Eli Tauber and Nussbaum totaling more than $27 million in allegedly defaulted mortgage debt.
As the investors became unwilling or unable to fund necessary repairs, tenants of the distressed apartments were often left in deteriorating living conditions, city code violations show.
Meanwhile, Nussbaum made headlines after he was hit with criminal charges about a year ago from Manhattan’s District Attorney’s office for allegedly stealing at least $15 million from his law firm’s escrow accounts. He has pleaded not guilty. More recently, Nussbaum also revealed via legal filings in a separate civil suit that he diverted over $330 million of escrow funds.
Eli and Jacob Tauber have not been accused of criminal misconduct.
Jacob Tauber and an attorney representing him in the bankruptcy filing, and an attorney representing Mark Nussbaum, did not respond to requests for comment. Jacob Tauber’s attorney, who was paid by Eli Tauber, also did not respond to requests for comment on Eli’s behalf.
Jacob Tauber’s troubled timeline
Before the Taubers made a big splash in Chicago, the younger Tauber was focusing on New Jersey real estate. In Newark, Jacob Tauber purchased over two dozen properties between 2018 and 2019. Most of them were small office buildings with ground-floor retail space or empty lots.
But he ran into trouble on his New Jersey deals in 2019 and 2020 when he stopped making loan payments toward several of the mortgages.
In one case, he took out an $11 million construction mortgage to redevelop two commercial properties on Broad Street in downtown Newark but did not complete the work, records show.
A judicial sale was completed for the property but because it did not cover the cost of the unpaid debt, a judge ordered Jacob Tauber to pay an additional $8 million to the lender.
In other cases, he’s fighting back. In 2022, he filed a lawsuit against one of his lenders, Brooklyn-based Yosef Brezel, alleging he improperly pursued a $25 million foreclosure against several of his Newark properties. In the original lawsuit, a judge entered a $37 million judgment against Tauber, which he has not paid, according to court records.
In total, Tauber has 12 outstanding civil lawsuits, according to his bankruptcy filing. Several lenders have already filed requests to have a judge lift automatic bankruptcy stays placed on their foreclosure proceedings, records show.
So far, one of those motions has been granted, allowing lenders to proceed with the foreclosure of one of Tauber’s three rental homes in Airmont, New York.
