LA City attorney sues Airbnb influencer, alleged head of illegal rental ring

LA City Attorney City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto means business when it comes to busting illegal Airbnbs.

Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has filed a lawsuit against a “massive” illegal short-term rental ring, allegedly run by an Airbnb influencer who offered master classes in his rental schemes.

According to the complaint, the rental group reaped more than $4 million in profits by listing dozens of illegal vacation rentals on platforms including Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com in violation of the city’s Short-Term Rental Ordinance.

Now the defendants are facing potential damages of $15 million or more.

“As renters battle a severe housing shortage and sky-high rent, these defendants exacerbated our housing crisis by leasing at least 30 apartments and houses from their owners and illegally renting them out as short-term rentals, city attorney Feldstein Soto said in a statement on the suit. “Our housing laws were enacted for a reason and I’ll always work to enforce them and hold violators accountable.”

According to the compliant, entrepreneur Vladyslav Yurov ran the operation using a scheme called “short-term rental arbitrage.” Yurov and his partners would rent properties from the owners on a long-term basis and then turn around and illegally list them on vacation rental sites. The scheme included several rent-stabilized units in expensive neighborhoods such as Venice and that were illegally turned into overnight rentals.

Yurov declined to comment on the allegations, telling the Daily News “there is nothing to talk about. City wanted the business to shut down — they got what they wanted.”

On a now-deleted Instagram account @vladbnb, Yurov pitched himself as an Airbnb guru and promoted guides to help people get rich using his business model. In one post he wrote “this is my exact process that helps my students make thousands with properties they don’t even own.”

The suit also names alleged business partners Anastasiia Medvedeva and Mari Meladze Nagidid as defendants. Mendvedeva not respond to a request for comment and Nagi could not be reached for comment by press time.

The city enacted its Short-Term Rental Ordinance in 2018 in response to the housing crisis and rapid growth of Airbnb, which was taking housing units off of the rental market for Angelenos seeking stable housing.

The ordinance sets strict limits on the conditions under which properties can be listed for short-term rental in the City of L.A., including:

• Hosts must register with the city and obtain a home-sharing permit
• Hosts can only list their primary residence as a short-term rental
• Hosts can only rent out their home for up to 120 days in a calendar year

According to the complaint, Yurov and his associates got around the ordinance by listing their properties under fake addresses outside of L.A. city limits that were not prohibited from being using as overnight rentals. Then only after the booking was confirmed Yurov and his associates would reveal the true location of the housing via direct message.

Sometimes this had negative consequences for renters. The suit cites the experience of one family that believed it was renting a property in a safe and wealthy neighborhood in Burbank, but instead were given an address in the less-affluent neighborhood of North Hollywood.

“The guests arrived to the real address with their small children to find unhoused people sleeping on the lawn, broken locks on the doors, and unlocked windows,” the complaint states. “Concerned for their family’s safety, the guests left the property and paid a premium to check into a hotel at the last minute.”

In addition to violating the city’s ordinance the defendants also allegedly violated California’s Unfair Competition Law by using false statements to misrepresent the location of their rentals.

According to the complaint, the defendants were served multiple cease-and-desist notices and the defendants then assured prosecutors that they were abandoning their illegal short-term rentals. But they continued to operate the rental ring by merely migrating the properties to new listings.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a similar suit filed by the City Attorney’s Office in September 2023 against The Nightfall Group, a company alleged to have listed several hundred properties for short-term rental in violation of the city’s Short-Term Rental Ordinance.