{"id":2447967,"date":"2019-08-25T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=311781"},"modified":"2019-08-25T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T03:00:00","slug":"pfisters-claims-survive-against-hechts-others-in-legal-feud-over-aspen-real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/pfisters-claims-survive-against-hechts-others-in-legal-feud-over-aspen-real-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"Pfister\u2019s claims survive against Hechts, others in legal feud over Aspen real estate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A downtown law firm must respond to allegations of self-dealing and racketeering committed at the expense of a prominent Aspen family\u2019s real estate assets, a judge ruled earlier this summer.<\/p>\n

The latest order in Aspen native Juliana Pfister\u2019s civil complaint against the Garfield & Hecht PC law firm and other defendants sets up the plaintiff to proceed on her Colorado Organized Crime Control Act claims against the defendants, said attorney Ronald Rossi of the New York firm Kasowitz Benwon Torres LLP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realize we have a lot of work to do to prove this in a court of law,\u201d Rossi said last week. \u201cWe have our shovels out, and we\u2019re ready to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defendants in Pfister\u2019s complaint, now in its third amended version, include the law firm, its name partners Ron Garfield and Andy Hecht, as well as Hecht\u2019s son \u2014 developer and hedge-funder Nikos Hecht \u2014 and local real estate investor Steve Hansen. In his June 21 order, Seldin dismissed the allegations against Aspen businessman and property investor Mark Friedland; he is no longer a defendant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a preliminary step that they have finally gotten over, in their third amended complaint, and now we\u2019re going to move to the actual proof part of the case and we\u2019ll exchange documents and testimony and that will take us into next summer,\u201d said attorney Daniel Reilly of the Denver Reilly Pozner LLP. \u201cThen we\u2019ll see whether these claims on paper stand up to the examinations under oath and in trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reilly represents Garfield & Hecht, as well as the two attorneys individually.<\/p>\n

Pfister, the daughter of the late Nancy Pfister and granddaughter of Art and Betty Pfister, filed her original lawsuit against the defendants in November 2016, before amending it multiple times with updated allegations. Art and Betty Pfister helped develop Buttermilk Ski Area and the Maroon Creek Club. Art Pfister died in March 2007; Betty Pfister in November 2011.<\/p>\n

The Pfister complaint has been folded into a probate case pending in Pitkin County District Court, according to Reilly and Rossi.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit accuses the defendants, led by Andy Hecht, of running an enterprise from 1999 to 2014 with the objective to cheat the Pfister family out of millions of dollars in cash and real estate holdings through a series of property deals. Andy Hecht\u2019s position as the family\u2019s trustee and attorney enabled to him to orchestrate the scheme while conducting transactions with other enterprise members by selling them some of the Pfister family\u2019s properties for below-market prices and without the family\u2019s consent, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were clearly insider deals, in our view, as alleged,\u201d Rossi said, \u201cand this is really quite a set of serious allegations, in our view, against Mr. Hecht and the other parties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit alleges multiple property deals under Andy Hecht\u2019s watch, resulting in financial losses to Art and Betty Pfister, while the two Hechts, Garfield and Hansen reaped profits from the transactions. Some of the deals were hatched while Art Pfister\u2019s mental faculties were in decline, the suit alleges.<\/p>\n

And two of those of transactions \u2014 Andy Hecht\u2019s dealing of both Buttermilk mountain lots to Friedland in February 2014, one for $2.5 million and the other for $2 million \u2014 closed two days after the murder of Nancy Pfister, daughter or Art and Betty, the complaint alleges. The lots were sold for $1.2 million and $1 million below market value, the suit contents.<\/p>\n

The suit also alleges that Andy Hecht, again acting as the Pfister family\u2019s trustee, sold their private retreat above Ruedi Reservoir \u2014 known as the Woods Lakes property \u2014 in 2005 below market value to Nikos Hecht for $800,000, \u201can exceedingly low purchase price,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

Andy Hecht, \u201cin a later attempt to explain the below-market sale of the Woods Lake interest to his son \u2026 later produced a letter which purports to tie that transaction to the sale of the Katie Reed Building, but is a forgery,\u201d Seldin wrote in summarizing the plaintiff\u2019s accusations on the deal.<\/p>\n

The Katie Reed Building, currently home to the Meat & Cheese restaurant and other businesses, had been owned by the Hechts, additional investors and the Pfister family, before the older Hecht sold the Pfisters\u2019 interest to Nikos Hecht and the Hecht Children\u2019s Trust without seeking its highest value, the lawsuit alleges. That same building is under different ownership today.<\/p>\n

Andy Hecht not only had a conflict of interest in the Reed Building deal by being involved on all sides of the transaction, but he also is alleged to have committed forgery to justify the Wood Lake and Katie Reed deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaintiff alleges that the letter purporting to tie this transaction to the Woods Lake Transaction is a forgery, and that the combination of the two sales either did not result in a net benefit to the Pfisters, or did not do so in a legitimate manner,\u201d Seldin wrote in the 40-page order.<\/p>\n

Other insider-dealing is alleged to have occurred with the transfer of Pfister-owned lots at the Maroon Creek Club, and the sale of their Lazy Chair lots in the exclusive Starwood neighborhood outside of Aspen.<\/p>\n

That Juliana Pfister is the sole Pfister plaintiff in the suit is telling, Reilly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s never been any claims made by anybody else,\u201d Reilly said. \u201cAnd that includes Art and Betty Pfister, and that includes Nancy Pfister and all of Pfister\u2019s family members.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow years later we have Art and Betty\u2019s granddaughter complaining about real estate sales and purchases that were undertaken years ago, which involved sophisticated Aspen folks with sophisticated Aspen lawyers and sophisticated Aspen real estate brokers that were arm\u2019s length transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A downtown law firm must respond to allegations of self-dealing and racketeering committed at the expense of a prominent Aspen family\u2019s real estate assets, a judge ruled earlier this summer. The latest order in Aspen native Juliana Pfister\u2019s civil complaint against the Garfield & Hecht PC law firm and other defendants sets up the plaintiff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 17:21:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}