Ex-partners in ill-fated Phoenix Trump Tower project trade charges in court

A dispute between two New York businessmen who were involved in the ill-fated attempt to build a Trump Tower in the Biltmore area of Phoenix ended up in the U.S. District Court for Arizona, with each accusing the other of ties to the Russian mob.

The case involved a Russian company, a Russian woman who may or may not exist and a slew of websites that are posting questionable information.

The lawsuit, filed in 2016, revolves around websites created by Felix Sater that disparage his former associate, Jody Kriss, the financial executive who was the public face of Bayrock Development, the company that attempted to build a Trump Tower along Camelback Road.

Kriss left Bayrock after what he said was a death threat by Sater and filed a lawsuit against the company in New York. Kriss contended that Bayrock operated as an illegal racketeering firm, not a development company. His 2010 complaint said Bayrock was “substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.”

Sater, who once carried a Trump Organization business card that identified him as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, responded by creating a series of websites filled with disparaging articles about Kriss, accusing him of embezzlement and being associated with Russian mobsters.

The websites played off of Kriss’s name and the company he later started, East River Partners. Sample domain names: jodykress.com; jodykress.info; jodykress.net; eastriverpartners.info; eastriverpartners.net.

Kriss contends, in court papers, that Sater offered to take the websites down if Kriss paid him $2 million and dropped his lawsuit alleging racketeering.

Kriss was able to get a court order to have the websites taken down. Sater’s federal lawsuit aimed to reverse that, citing Sater’s First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for Arizona in 2016 because the websites were registered by GoDaddy, the Internet company based in Scottsdale.

It added to the string of legal actions filed by Kriss against Bayrock after he left the firm in 2010.

The dispute between the two men appears to be at an end. The New York suit was settled this month. On Friday, a motion was filed in Phoenix to end the dispute over the websites. The motion contained no details.

Project proposed at choice site

Kriss was the public face of the Trump project when it was proposed for a parcel of land near 24th Street and Camelback Road, one of the city’s most prestigious intersections.

"This site could be one of the most choice pieces of real estate in the West,” Kriss was quoted as saying in a 2003 article.

The Trump Tower complex, which would have included residences and a hotel, was never built.

Neighbors living just to the south of the proposed development feared a high-rise that would loom over their backyards. They successfully fought a zoning change at City Hall, killing the project. The parcel now houses a low-rise condominium complex instead.

READ MORE: How Phoenix residents halted Trump's Camelback project

In a 2010 lawsuit, Kriss contends that the Bayrock company defrauded the owner of the parcel in Phoenix where the Trump condominium project would be built.

That man, Ernest Menes, had owned the parcel near the intersection of 24th Street and Camelback Road. At the time, the land contained a shuttered Hard Rock Café and a restaurant called the Marco Polo Supper Club.

Menes filed his own suit against Bayrock in 2007 and alleged that Sater had threatened to kill and torture him. Kriss, in his suit, said Sater had similarly threatened him while he was still at Bayrock. Part of the reason he left the company, he claims in his suit, is that he knew Sater was serious because of the Menes threat.

Websites disparaged partner

The domain names related to Kriss’s name were registered with GoDaddy in 2012, according to court papers. The ones related to East River Partners were registered in 2014. Sater, according to his lawsuit, then transferred ownership to a Russian company called OST Group.

Each of the 13 websites found unique ways of disparaging Kriss, according to the court documents. Kriss, for his part, said the information contained on the websites was untrue. Sater said he had a right to run websites critical of Kriss.

Kriss filed suit in Ohio in 2015 against the anonymous persons that posted the defamatory words about him. Since Kriss didn’t know who the people were, the lawsuit was served by publishing notice of it in area newspapers.

Sater, in court documents, said Kriss intentionally filed the lawsuit in Ohio knowing there was little chance he would see notice of it, thereby ensuring he would face no opposition in court.

Whatever the motive, that is what happened.

No one showed up for the other side and Kriss won the lawsuit by default. According to court documents, he then alerted Google and other companies about the order to remove the material.

Sater, according to court papers, didn’t know about the lawsuit until OST Group tried to get Google to index its websites so they showed up in searches.

OST Group tried to get the Ohio courts to reopen the case, appealing it to that state’s highest court. That court declined to take the case in January.

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Kriss also pursued his case in the international forum that resolves disputes over domain names. An arbiter decided the case in Kriss’s favor in March 2016, ruling that Kriss should own the domain names that carry his name and company.

Does Larissa Yudina exist?

Sater filed his court case the next month in Phoenix, asking a judge to order that OST Group was the rightful owner of the domain names.

Joining Sater in that lawsuit was a woman named Larissa Yudina. According to court documents filed by Sater’s side, Yudina is a 65-year-old Russian woman, who is the sole employee of her son’s company, OST Group.

Kriss, according to court documents, believes Yudina doesn’t exist and is a pseudonym used by Sater.

Recent disputes in the case have centered on whether Yudina would be compelled to fly to Phoenix to be interviewed by Kriss’s attorneys in the lawsuit she filed. Kriss’s attorneys have offered, as an alternative, to take her deposition in New York, assuming she exists.

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetawa ruled that Yudina could be interviewed in New York, with both sides sharing the costs of her trip. Months later, Yudina filed papers asking to be dropped as a plaintiff.

In August, attorneys for Sater and Kriss told the Phoenix judge that the two parties were close to a settlement of the 2010 case that was filed in New York. Part of that settlement, according to a court filing, would mean also settling the dispute over the websites.

In January, Robert Wolf, the New York attorney who still represents Sater, wrote the court and again promised that a settlement of the case was at hand.

“We anticipate that a final settlement will be reached in the coming days,” Wolf wrote, “at which time Plaintiffs will voluntarily dismiss this action.”

Wolf did not return a request for comment.

The judge ordered the plaintiffs in the case — Sater, the Russian woman and the Russian company — to provide an update in the case by Friday, or file to have it dismissed.

On Friday, the parties filed a document with the court saying they agreed to dismiss the case. A document dismissing the New York case was filed in March.