Zions Bank and Western Alliance Bank claimed they were defrauded out of nearly $160M. Zions subsidiary California Bank & Trust claims it lent more than $60M to an investor group that listed 16 properties as collateral; six of those assets were investments under Newport Beach-based MOM CA Investco, which filed for bankruptcy in February. When California Bank & Trust underwrote the loans in 2016 and 2017, the company required lender protections, namely that it would be first in line for repayment if the borrower defaulted and liquidated its assets. California Bank & Trust said it later discovered other lenders actually held liens on several of those same buildings, thus rendering Zions’ protection obsolete when the assets went into liquidation. Western Alliance Bancorp filed a complaint in August, saying the same investor group, led by Gerald Marcil, Andrew Stupin and Deba Shyam, owes it nearly $99M. The bank alleges the group hid the fact that some of the collateral properties were already in foreclosure, in turn undermining the bank’s repayment rights. #CommercialRealEstate