Amin Naaman carved-up property empire as app business collapsed
Disgruntled investors left short-changed after the fall of a Sydney tech start-up have started laying claim to a lucrative property portfolio. Sydney crime figures are believed to be among those chasing at least $100 million from app firm Naamtech.
NSW
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The men at the centre of a failed tech start-up that has left Sydney’s underworld chasing millions carved up a lucrative property portfolio as investors chased them for payment.
The sell-off included transferring a million-dollar four-bedroom home into another man’s name for nothing, financial records show.
The financial mess brothers Jalal and Amin Naaman left in their wake can be revealed as some short-changed investors eye off what remains.
The downfall of tech start-up Naamtech has been the talk of underworld circles with claims some of the southwest Sydney’s most notorious crime figures poured more than $100 million into the venture.
The demise of Naamtech – an app development company based in Rhodes – has also left many legitimate investors and former staff out of pocket.
Amin, the brains behind the operation, has not surfaced since Naamtech was wound-up and the NSW Supreme Court appointed a liquidator in September.
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The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it would review any liquidator reports for “potential misconduct by company officers” within its jurisdiction.
It is understood NSW Police has attempted to track down some short-changed investors after the shooting of a former gang member in Auburn in October was linked to rising tensions over the missing money.
But it has been a difficult task given the legitimacy of some key investors and rumours about large cash injections without paper trails.
“Some of these guys are right up there – I’m not talking your everyday Gucci-hat wearing gangsters,” one source told The Sunday Telegraph.
An insight into the missing entrepreneur’s assets reveals Amin – nicknamed “the app guy” – and Jalal, through one of their companies, began offloading property as concerned investors nipped at their heels.
A majority of property was purchased under the company name – Devtown Pty Ltd – of which Jalal and another relative, Tarek Naaman, are directors.
Devtown was the name of a financial and investment app for major developments that Amin was trying to get off the ground.
He had a team of about 20 staff based in Rhodes trying to create a suite of apps, including Bnktown, another lending platform, and Smart Table, a food ordering service.
In the space of four months last year, Devtown splashed almost $5 million on four separate properties – including a palatial, Hamptons-style mansion in Cobitty.
The four-bedroom estate was purchased for $1.65 million in April, 2018.
It is the only property that hasn’t been sold off or slapped with a caveat and is still owned by the business, records show.
Although in a sign of the Naamans’ financial woes, two mortgages were taken out over the property in May and June this year.
In April last year, Devtown also paid $1.23 million for a 682 sqm block – marketed as an investor’s dream – on Noble Ave in Greenacre.
The business had already bought the block next door – with a five-bedroom home — six months earlier for $1.3 million.
Property records show both blocks were sold to an Auburn-based developer for $2.1 million in August, a month before staff took Naamtech to the Supreme Court in a bid to recoup thousands in unpaid wages.
Amin only had one property in his own name, a home he bought with his wife Marta Pasic, for $1.65 million in 2017.
But in May money was borrowed against that home too, from little known lender Billone Funding and a man named Abdallah El-Cheikh, records show.
A month later, a Yagoona man lodged a caveat, which stakes a legal claim of interest in a property, even if it’s put up for sale or seized.
It is unclear what the man’s connection to the case is.
Another caveat was lodged by someone else, believed to be an investor, over an Auburn home, purchased by Devtown for $960,000 in August last year.
Curiously, a four-bedroom Old Guildford home Devtown paid $1.06 million for in April, 2018, was transferred to a man named Moustafa Nahle for nothing.
Records show Jalal and his nephew, Tarek Naaman, signed off on the transfer in August this year.
Mr Nahle and the law firm involved in the caveats refused to comment.
There is no suggestion Ms Pasic, Mr El-Cheikh or Mr Nahle are part of the underworld or have engaged in any wrongdoing.
Originally published as Amin Naaman carved-up property empire as app business collapsed
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