Bennito L. Kelty
Audio By Carbonatix
The City of Aurora is close to settling a lawsuit against the owner of apartment complexes that were at the center of an infamous and embarrassing Venezuelan gang controversy in 2024.
Before the 2024 presidential election, footage of six armed men walking through the halls of an Aurora apartment spurred local and national hysteria, leading to claims that violent Venezuelan gangs had taken over the city. However, Five Dallas Partners LLC, the registered owners of the since-sold apartment building, the Edge of Lowry, have been accused of numerous code violations by the city, which has been trying to recover expenses since filing a lawsuit in November 2024.
An Aurora municipal judge has set a final hearing for Wednesday, February 19. According to Aurora City Attorney Megan Platt, Five Dallas Partners will reach a settlement after it resolves “tax issues” cited by the company’s attorney.
Five Dallas Partners is affiliated with CBZ Management, a New York-based company that used to operate a dozen properties in Colorado, including three in Aurora.
Aurora city prosecutors identify Zev Baumgarten as the owner of Five Dallas Partners and CBZ Management. City records show that there are seven active arrest warrants in Aurora for Baumgarten, and the portfolio of properties once managed by him has faced neglected property code violations like rat infestations, sewage messes and broken windows for years.
Baumgarten is also the source of the claim that Venezuelan gangs were taking over Aurora apartments. In 2024, he told media that Venezuelan gangs muscled out of control of the Aspen Grove apartments — another property his company owned at 1568 Nome Street — as the city moved to shut down the property for similar code violations dating back to 2020.
Some Aurora city officials denied Baumgarten’s claim while others defended it; Mayor Mike Coffman called CBZ a bunch of “out-of-state slumlords” at the time.
City attorneys filed a lawsuit in November 2024 to immediately shut down the Edge after Five Dallas Partners refused to meet despite public health concerns. At the time, residents complained of rat and bedbug infestations, flooding, broken windows and mounting piles of trash in and around the buildings.
Aurora’s lawsuit also sought to recover “costs incurred to effect a closure of the property,” though the city never specified exactly how much that is “due to the rules of civil procedure,” says Joe Rubino, a city spokesperson. A Denver7 article from last February cited a city statement that puts the cost at a half-million while the Aurora Sentinel reported in March that it could be upwards of $800,000.
In January 2025, a judge ruled in favor of the city’s request to close the Edge. The case was transferred to a court-appointed receiver, or a temporary third-party, with residents evicted in February 2025.
Five Dallas Partners motioned for a judge to dismiss the lawsuit last April, when it accused Aurora city code enforcers of anti-Semitism and targeting Baumgarten because Baumgarten is an Orthodox Jew. In June, the discrimination claim was rejected.
According to Five Dallas Partners’ discrimination lawsuit, CBZ is a “family-owned consortium,” and Baumgarten’s role was to directly manage a dozen properties it ran in Colorado.
Action surrounding the lawsuit has slowed since the June 2025 decision to dismiss the discrimination claim, but a two-week jury trial for the lawsuit was scheduled to begin on January 27, 2026, whether Baumgarten appeared or not. The city filed a motion to vacate the trial on January 19, however, signaling that it was in the process of settling with Five Dallas Partners.
According to the motion, city attorneys reached an agreement on January 15 with Five Dallas’s lawyers from Tyson and Mendes, who have replaced the company’s previous lawyer, former Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett. Tyson and Mendes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The agreement “involves the release and other resolution of certain liens filed by the City of Aurora against the subject property,” the motion reads. Neither side offered more details about the settlement at the trial on Tuesday, February 3.
Records show CBZ is handling multiple court cases in Colorado right now. On January 28, CBZ Management filed an opening brief with the state Court of Appeals to overturn a decision by a Denver judge forcing it to comply with an investigation by Attorney General Phil Weiser into possible violations of state consumer protection laws.
Baumgarten also has active arrest warrants in Denver stemming from similar code violations, which have been reported at several properties that CBZ managed throughout the metro area.
Seeking Justice in Aurora
In October 2024, the Aurora law enforcement began a criminal case against Baumgarten to resolve health and safety code violations at the Edge.
By that time, Baumgarten’s claims of a gang takeover were taking on a life of its own. President Donald Trump played off the Venezuelan gang controversy earlier that month during a campaign stop in Aurora, and named a mass deportation plan after the city.
The Aurora Police Department eventually arrested all six men in the video for felony burglary and menacing stemming from events in the video, but none of them were publicly confirmed as gang members, only as having suspected ties. The Edge was also the site of a violent kidnapping in December 2024. Still, APD has consistently downplayed the gang takeover claim, even as some of Aurora’s right-leaning elected officials, like former Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, adamantly defended and promoted it.
Baumgarten’s criminal trial hasn’t really moved forward, though, largely because city prosecutors can’t find him. Last March, an Aurora judge issued seven arrest warrants for Baumgarten’s failure to appear to resolve his criminal case. That same month, his brother and business partner, Shmaryahu, was breaking ground on a controversial $200 million luxury resort in the Caribbean.
The City of Aurora has never had an abundance of evidence proving Baumgarten owns CBZ or any of the affiliated LLCs listed as the owners of the three properties CBZ managed in the city. Four different LLCs are registered to the same New York address as CBZ, and all are listed owners of the three Aurora apartment complexes. In December 2024, an Aurora judge considered dismissing the criminal case because of a lack of such evidence, but prosecutors prevailed.
CBZ’s three former Aurora properties have closed over the past two years, and the company no longer has a website. It’s unclear how many Colorado properties it still owns.
Aspire Property Management now manages the former Whispering Pines at 1357 Helena Street, which CBZ lost through a lawsuit by U.S. Bank. However, the building is registered with Arapahoe County under a new address, 15483 East 13th Avenue, and has a new owner registered with the state: CW Capitol, a New York real estate company.
Aspire renovated the Edge, too. A company spokesman said in October that the property is still owned by a court-appointed third party, but freshly redone units at the property have been listed in recent months.
According to Rubino with the City of Aurora, a settlement of the lawsuit doesn’t affect Baumgarten’s criminal case, and he still faces as much as six months in jail if he’s ever arrested and convicted.
“The latest developments in the Five Dallas Partners LLC civil case have no bearing whatsoever on the seven criminal code violation cases filed against Zev Baumgarten. Nothing will change with the criminal charges until Mr. Baumgarten returns to court. He has failed to appear for mandatory court appearances and the municipal warrants for him remain in place,” Rubino says.
