In the civil justice system, business fraud offenses are considered especially heinous. But the actors who play dedicated NYPD detectives can’t possibly know that one of their luxury condos will end up in the hands of a Georgian swindler. This is his story.
Law & Order: SVU star Chris Meloni’s old flat in New York City is now at the center of some serious legal drama. It’s become the hideout for a fracking industry fraudster who duped a business partner in Texas, lost a court case there, and has been dodging the $1 million judgment for so long that he now owes three times that.
David Sepiachvili and Natalia Sapir Antonni bought the actor’s Midtown Manhattan condo for $8.15 million eight years ago, according to the Observer. But on Friday, a scorned Russian investor named Nikolay Rastorguev sued the pair in New York state court, saying that Sepiachvili is now playing shell games to avoid losing the massive four-bedroom flat on prime real estate located just a block from Carnegie Hall.
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The lawsuit says that Sepiachvili recently transferred the condo’s ownership to Antonni to avoid payment—which has now ballooned with interest to $3 million.
Sepiachvili, who hails from Russia’s neighboring country of Georgia, got into serious financial trouble shortly after buying the actor’s condo. According to federal court documents obtained by The Daily Beast, he accepted $800,000 in July 2016 from Rastorguev in exchange for shares of an oil-and-gas business venture called the Austin Chalk Development Project. But a court found that instead of holding up his end of the deal and acquiring the land he promised to buy, the money was routed in other directions—and Rastorguev never got it back.
Harper Estes, a Texas lawyer who serves as a private judge when people resolve legal issues in arbitration, reviewed the case for a federal court and determined in 2021 that this was “garden variety fraud.” But he also called it a “rare case that supports the claim of civil conspiracy.”
“Knowledge of the oil and gas industry or use of land brokerage firms cannot and does not justify in any way the taking of another’s funds under false pretenses and using the funds for other purposes,” he wrote.
The arbitrator also noted something else: the scheme involved a company called Level One Advisors and another man with a similar name, David A. Sepiashvili. That confusing twist points to a New York Republican political operative who serves as an elected GOP district leader in Brooklyn and has previously worked for the city’s elections board. That second Sepiashvili—this time spelled with an “s”—lists himself on LinkedIn as the founder and president of Level One, noting the company’s involvement in Austin Chalk and calling it an “unconventional oil & gas development project.” Calls, texts, and social media messages to that second man with a similar name went unanswered on Monday.
However, the money appears to never have been paid. When a year went by, the Russian followed up in 2022 by suing both men in Brooklyn—swiftly winning a judgment in state court.
The Russian is resorting to this third attempt by suing in Manhattan state court and trying to have a judge intervene by stopping the first Sepiachvili from switching the condo’s ownership status—and ordering its immediate sale to pay the outstanding debt.
Reached on Monday, Sepiachvili declined to provide any details about his long-running legal headache, merely referring to his scorned business partner Rastorguev as a guy connected to some “bad people in Russia.”
“He is an asshole,” Sepiachvili said.
