Indicted crypto CEO Sonny Meraban selling Trump Tower condo

Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain's Chicago Business. He joined Crain's in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.

A man who is under indictment for operating a cryptocurrency scam using unlicensed ATMs put his condo at Trump International Hotel & Tower on the market at a considerable markup.

The three-bedroom condo on the tower's 68th floor came on the market Thursday, priced at $2.5 million. Public records show it was purchased in June 2022 for a little more than $2.17 million by a legal entity controlled by Sonny Meraban.

In March, the U.S. Secret Service announced that an Ohio grand jury indicted Meraban, his father and a third man on several charges related to 52 cryptocurrency kiosks they operated in northeast Ohio. The three were all officers of S&P Solutions, a company based in Lisle and doing business as Bitcoin of America, or BOA. Sonny Meraban was CEO.

According to the Secret Service statement, the men were involved in owning and operating cryptocurrency kiosks illegally and made false representations to Ohio regulators to avoid detection. "In addition," the statement said, "scammers and robocallers utilized BOA's lack of consumer protections and anti-money laundering measures to facilitate transfers from victims in Ohio and across the U.S. BOA retained victim fee money even after being notified that the fee came from fraud victims’ transfers. The fee would average around 20% of the total amount transferred."

Sonny Meraban, who was arrested in March at his home in Miami on charges that include corruption, conspiracy and money laundering, is out on bond and has a pretrial hearing scheduled for Tuesday, according to the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, clerk of courts. Crain's could not reach Meraban. There is no phone number listed for him either at the house he rents in Miami or at the Trump condo.

The listing agent for the Trump condo, Natalya Gorodetsky of Core Realty & Investments, declined to comment.

The asking price for the condo is nearly 15% over what Meraban's entity, called Tower Entertainment, paid for it a year ago. Condo prices in the Near North Side, which encompasses the Trump building, are running about 6.8% below last year, according to data from the Chicago Association of Realtors and Midwest Real Estate Data. On Thursday, a 47th-floor Trump Tower condo sold for $1.25 million, or about 6% below what the seller paid for it 15 years ago, in 2008, according to the Cook County clerk.

Gorodetsky's listing does not mention any improvements in the past year. Improvements might have contributed to the $400,000 markup over its June 2022 price.

DuPage County public records show that Sonny Meraban owned a house in Lisle until February 2020, when he sold it for $418,000. The four-bedroom house is about 2.5 miles from the S&P Solutions office, which was raided by the Secret Service on March 3, two days after Meraban was arrested in Miami. Public records do not indicate he has any other homes in the Chicago area.

Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain's Chicago Business. He joined Crain's in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.

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The condo, one of four unfinished floors Griffin bought at No. 9 Walton in 2017, is for sale at $12 million, less than he paid for it.