AURORA | CBZ Management, the property management company that gained notoriety by alleging last summer that three of their Aurora properties were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, is the subject of two ongoing court cases, a civil and a criminal case involving Zev Baumgarten as the representative for CBZ.
The civil case for Baumgarten was supposed to take place this week, but it was postponed to allow more trial days for the long list of witnesses CBZ plans to call to the stand. The new dates are scheduled for five days in November, instead of the three days of trial scheduled this week to allow more time for those witnesses. The case is scheduled to be heard in Aurora Municipal Court.
“Forcing Five Dallas to defend itself in the three days allotted would result in significant prejudice to Five Dallas as it would have insufficient time to adequately present its defense to the claims at issue,” a motion from CBZ’s attorney, Stan Garnett, said.
The civil case was used by the city to evict everyone and shutter the buildings at the Edge at Lowry property on Dallas Street in February 2025 after months of controversy. The city claimed that it accrued $800,000 in costs from maintaining some of the properties’ responsibilities, including trash collection and relocating residents who had the required documents to lease a new apartment, after CBZ management abandoned all of their Aurora properties.
Aurora City Attorney Pete Schulte previously told the Sentinel that the city worked for months to get the property managers into court to first take care of the buildings, and then, as they deteriorated, to close the complex.
The controversy has played out in both the local and national media, eventually drawing the attention of the Trump campaign last fall.
It’s unclear when management allegedly abandoned each property, according to city and court records. CBZ’s previous attorney, Bud Slatkin, emailed the city a formal letter in July saying the management was forced off all three of their properties because of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and would not be returning.
For months, the city and local police have maintained that a long list of public health and safety problems at the building were caused by mismanagement, which led to documented reports of a wide variety of crimes and criminal activity inside the buildings.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman publicly called CBZ officials “slumlords.”
With the three properties left without any management, the public nuisance issues quickly began to rise, including complaints of a lack of electricity and trash disposal, flooding, along with significant spikes in criminal activities on and around the properties.
CBZ officials have for months insisted that the properties were overrun with gangsters — linked to the notorious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, also called TdA — and that police and local officials disregarded pleas for help from managers and some tenants.
The three properties were the Aspen Grove apartments on Nome Street, which were forcefully closed by the city in August 2024, and the other two were the Edge at Lowry on Dallas Street and the Whispering Pines on Helena Street. All of the properties were owned by or directly linked to CBZ principles.
The two current court cases mainly involve the Edge at Lowry, with one of the summonses sent to Zev Baumgarten, including the Whispering Pines.
“A documented history of neglect by CBZ and its various LLCs has left the complex in a state of disrepair that alone presents a risk to public well-being,” a city statement said in January upon the closure of the buildings. “More recently, CBZ’s absentee ownership has allowed a criminal element to victimize residents, including Venezuelan migrants seeking refuge from social strife in their home country. The safety risks at the complex have resulted in multiple high-profile criminal incidents, mostly recently culminating in the kidnapping and assault of two residents on Dec. 17.”
The one that was supposed to be a three-day trial this week was the criminal nuisance civil lawsuit against Five Dallas Partners LLC, for the closure of the Edge of Lowry. This is the case where the city is alleging $800,000 in accrued damages.
In the most recent motions for the civil criminal nuissance case against Five Dallas Partners LLC, there was one notable motion that the city agreed to add as a “stipulated fact” that Garnett said was a big win for the defense.
“In or around June 2024, TdA had assumed control of the property,” the motion said. “TdA and its associates were extorting tenants to pay their rent to TdA instead of Five Dallas and threatening Five Dallas and its property manager with physical violence if they attempted to access the Property.”
That was an about-turn from previous statements from the city and police. Although police have long stipulated that Venezuelan gang activity was occurring at the three apartments, they have repeatedly denied allegations that the buildings were “overrun” by gang members or any criminals, as building owners and some city lawmakers have claimed.
The city has had nearly the same issues with all three locations, with the owners of CBZ Management and their LLCs. Lawyers for the CBZ have maintained that owners should not be held responsible for gang members forcing them out.
Slatkin and CBZ Management have alleged that the city, the Aurora Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew about the gang members and did nothing to help the property management company, claims that the city has repeatedly denied.
The City of Aurora also filed seven criminal cases against CBZ’s principals (individuals associated with the company) for unresolved habitability problems, code violations and neglect of properties like the Edge at Lowry and Whispering Pines.
The reason Zev Baumgarten was named the representative for CBZ and many of its corporations in Aurora, including Five Dallas Partners, was because he was a “consultant” for the properties, according to the court documents, and he was also listed on the Secretary of State paperwork in previous years.
Zev is also related to Shmary Baumgarten, the “managing member of Five Dallas and one of two members of CBZ Management, LLC,” according to court documents.
When the city began to have problems with the different CBZ-affiliated properties in Aurora for public nuisance problems, like criminal activity, they began serving the different corporations with code violations for the neglect of their properties.
After attempting to send the summonses to different registered agents on the Secretary of State, which were third-party companies and one of CBZ’s attorneys, Slatkin, they sent them to Zev.
Schulte told the Sentinel that the city pursues the person in charge of the property when it comes to issuing a summons. He said that Baumgarten told the city he was the “person in charge of the upkeep of the property.” Baumgarten was also listed as the registered agent on the Secretary of State for five of the Dallas buildings from 2020 to 2022.
Zev has not appeared at either of the last two court dates for his criminal case, and the judge gave him an arrest warrant for seven counts of contempt of court for each building, including all six Edge at Lowry buildings and the Whispering Pines complex.
Garnett also added surprising motions to the first hearing of Zev’s criminal case by alleging that the city told Zev they were pinpointing him because he is Jewish. When Zev did not appear at his most recent court case, Judge Brian Whitney said he was unable to make a ruling in court and was forced to issue a written ruling instead.
“During a phone call with Breezy Maynes, the Supervisor of the Aurora Code Enforcement Officers for the City, (Zev) Baumgarten pointedly asked Ms. Maynes to explain why she was being so hard on him,” lawyers for the defendant, Baumgarten, said in a court motion filed Friday. “Ms. Maynes retorted, ‘because you are an Orthodox Jew,’ an alarming and disturbing statement. Other City officials echoed these antisemitic sentiments.”
Lawyers for Baumgarten indicated they were seeking to prove the date of the phone conversation, but they did not indicate the conversation was recorded.
“We are asking the court to order all communications within the city regarding this prosecution and enforcement action based on the evidence that was cited of anti-semitic bias,” Stan Garnett, attorney for Baumgarten, said in an email to the Sentinel.
City officials denied the allegations and said the evidence against CBZ is compelling.
“The city has compiled extensive documentation over the last several years to validate the numerous problems at the properties connected to CBZ Management and its principals, including Mr. Baumgarten,” Ryan Luby, Aurora spokesperson, said previously in a statement. “We have shared those records publicly. The city only learned of Mr. Baumgarten’s latest accusations against the city in the last 18 hours. Despite many interactions with Mr. Baumgarten and his teams of attorneys over the years, this is the first time the city has heard these new claims. We have no indication that any of them hold any merit.”
Whitney later ruled against the selective enforcement discovery motion and said there was no evidence of the antisemitic claims.
The court date for Baumgarten’s next appearance has not been scheduled yet.
That is the most ham-handed defense ever concocted. Never in the history of antisemitism has anyone ever stated their bigotry that directly. I know Breezy. I know most of the City Officials. There is no concievable way they made those statements. Zev and his attorneys need to find another defense other than, as Albert Brooks once stated, playing the Jew card. https://youtu.be/MIZSWO65BXQ
These CBZ apartments had homeowners that lived around them that were making the calls before the city decided maybe there might be a problem. 1000 calls to APD over a year period. One caller Cindy Romero,(Dallas Street Apt) had enough and sick and tired of it. She called local reporter Vicente Arenas, this made this local code enforcement action official and brought Aurora into the national media spotlight, including questions to Governor Polis. Par for the course he brushed it away as CM Jurinsky’s, imagination. In short, the city was complicit in this mess with their poor display in habitability enforcement. As serious and with all these violations the city was running around in circles pinning red notice of violation on doors, they had no plan. Never any follow up with enforcement. Why the city did not notify the Arapahoe and Adams health departments utilizing state rules of critical health issues. But they hoped they had a slam-dunk solution instead. And here we are, with what still seems problematic to the case. A little something else is needed, appearance of the defendant. According to Westword, Baumgarten is developing a $200 million dollar hotel in Turks islands. He looks to be staying away for a while and enjoying the sun. The city can’t have a trial without him.