Sherman Oaks-based MDNI Group scooped up a 28-unit apartment building on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica that’s been in receivership since last year.
MDNI beat out nine other bidders to purchase 901 Ocean Ave. for $26 million, or about $928,600 per unit, in an all-cash foreclosure auction, according to property records. A spokesperson for CBRE, which represented court-appointed receiver Douglas Wilson, confirmed the transaction.
The deal includes an all-cash bid of $23.5 million, plus $2.4 million worth of fees to take the property out of receivership.
The sale helps lender Nano Bank recoup some of the $24 million it’s owed in unpaid debt backed by the property. And it provides a glimpse into Huntington Beach-based real estate investor Andrew Stupin’s protracted legal battle with investment partners and several regional banks that provided at least $108 million worth of loans tied to properties in California, according to lawsuits filed in 2025 by Nano, Banc of California and Enterprise Bank & Trust.
Those lawsuits had a brief ripple effect across investment markets last year as traders feared more bad loans would surface in the regional banking sector.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, were just getting started.
The financing scheme
Stupin’s Coastline Real Estate Investments purchased 901 Ocean Ave. five years ago for $32.6 million amid a rebounding multifamily market in Santa Monica, as the Business Journal previously reported. The firm received a $27 million loan from Nano Bank, backed by the property and a personal guarantee from Stupin’s family trust, property records show.
However, the interest in the property was transferred in 2022 to a pair of business entities tied to a group of investors including Jason Miller and L.A. multifamily landlord Jerry Marcil, according to public records and court filings.
The trio – Stupin, Marcil, and Miller – are among a few of the real estate investors who got caught in an intricate web of alleged bank fraud that federal prosecutors say was masterminded by Continuum Analytics’ Mahender Makhijani. Following a June arrest at his Newport Beach residence, federal agents charged Makhijani with orchestrating a scheme to falsify title documents, effectively obscuring the true lien positions held by lenders.
Looming default
The 901 Ocean debt went bad three years later, when Stupin’s firm stopped making interest payments on its loan from Nano Bank, and the lender sent a default notice in May 2025. Stupin and his wife, Julie Stupin, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April amid a larger federal probe into his role in an alleged scheme to defraud the regional lenders.
Then the real trouble started.
Nano sued Stupin and the other investors in the properties last December, alleging it was never informed that Coastline sold its stake in the property to other investors, according to the complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. A judge placed the building into a receivership and appointed Douglas Wilson to oversee day-to-day operations as the case progressed toward a foreclosure sale.
Steven Gubner, a lawyer for Marcil, told the Business Journal that Marcil is a victim of Makhijani’s machinations: “Jerry was an investor with Makhijani,” Gubner said. “He was defrauded, like many others.”
Representatives for Stupin and Miller did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
MDNI: Winning bidder
CBRE was hired to run the auction. The brokerage listed the property in March. The sale took place in June, and winning bidder MDNI closed the deal a week later, Douglas Wilson stated in its recent court filing.
CBRE’s Priscila Nee, who arranged the sale along with Dan Blackwell, said in a statement there was huge interest in the three-story property from the get-go because it sits on “one of the most tightly held stretches of Ocean Avenue.”
The 31,000-square-foot building is 79% leased, according to Douglas Wilson’s most recent report. It was completed in 1970 on the corner lot between Montana Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard. Despite its age, the location is great – just a block from the beach and about a mile from the Santa Monica Pier. Some units offer ocean views and private balconies.
“Ocean Avenue north of Wilshire has extremely limited multifamily inventory and long-term ownership patterns,” Blackwell said in a statement. “The views, the frontage and the scale of this property create a profile that is very difficult to replicate anywhere on the Westside.”
