On a new social media account, CBZ Management is doubling down on its claims of a Venezuelan gang takeover. The company runs 11 apartment complexes in Colorado, including three problem buildings in Aurora that have become a national talking point about immigration politics.
Last month, a new account on the social networking site X (formerly Twitter) showed up. It made its first post on Friday. Since then, CBZ Management has put the link to the account on its website and claimed it in public on Monday.
A lot of posts from the account over the weekend said that gangs had taken over several of the company’s Aurora buildings. This was the most public part of a back-and-forth between the apartment manager and the city that has been going on for months.
In the new social media posts, one of the claims is that a local CBZ employee was “attacked” because they turned down a payment from a group of men who had been living in an empty apartment. The company posted a picture of a guy who was badly hurt and a video clip that they said showed part of the attack.
A police report from that incident was not made public, but Denver7 obtained a complaint from the 18th Judicial District Court that says Yoendry Vilchez Medina-Jose, a known TdA member, assaulted Zev Baumgarten in November 2023.
Baumgarten is the company’s property manager, and the city has said it will take legal action against him for charges related to at least one run-down apartment complex. There were no other information given about the attack.
“We have said several times in the past that we have not yet obtained evidence of a gang takeover at any CBZ properties,” Aurora police told Denver7 in a statement about the new claims.
“We’ve acknowledged it’s likely gang members have and/or are residing at CBZ properties, but as you know from experience you could say the same about a lot of different gangs and a lot of different properties throughout the metro area.”
The CBZ X account shared more videos that it says show proof of a takeover by the notorious prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA). However, it did not say if or how it was sure that the people seen in the videos were members of TdA.
The posts got a lot of attention across the country, and Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, backed up the claims in an early-morning share on Monday. It was also less than 24 hours after former President Donald Trump’s Aurora rally, which was mostly about the presence of Venezuelan gangs in American towns.
In one of the posts, CBZ said that city officials were not ready “to take meaningful action” when the company brought up the issue of gangs thought to be infiltrating its projects. Colorado’s Denver7 has asked the city to talk to CBZ Management.
In early August, the city said it would shut down Fitzsimons Place, a complex on Nome Street, because of code violations and bad living conditions. This put CBZ Management in the news. At the time, CBZ said it wasn’t at the building to make things better because of what they said was a gang takeover.
After this, the company has said the same things about two more of its Aurora properties: The Edge of Lowry on Dallas Street and the Whispering Pines Apartments on Helena Street.
In August, a law company working for CBZ sent a letter to the city saying that gang members had taken over the Whispering Pines Apartments and started a string of violent crimes. These claims were made again on social media over the weekend.
Inspection records, on the other hand, show that Whispering Pines residents have had problems with things like broken doors and crumbling balconies for a while now.
The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment told Denver7 that it has been looking into reports for years at The Jewell, William Penn, and Courtyard on Vine, which are all owned by CBZ Management.
In the past few months, several Denver7 reporters have contacted CBZ Management about the claims against the company and its background. We haven’t been able to talk to the company.
Natalie Chuck, an investigative reporter for Denver7, replied to one of the company’s posts on X and asked, “Why take to social media instead of talking to local news reporters?”
But the company said, “We’re just a business trying to give value to our tenants and owners.” “We’re responding now because we’re fed up with the media spreading false information about us.” A lot of the media outlets we did talk to didn’t care about our facts. People can see for themselves by reading more facts about X that we’ll share.
We also asked the city what it thought about the social media account and the claims that were made again in public.
“We are not going to believe these claims that keep being made.” “Please look at the many statements and public records we have sent you,” a city spokesman said in a text message.
“It’s funny that these bad property owners, managers, and/or “investors” don’t want to admit that their bank lenders took them to court a few weeks ago and got some of their troublesome properties put into receivership.
That means a judge has given legal power to a third-party receiver to handle the properties, and the owners of those properties will have to pay that receiver.
Trump repeated these claims during the presidential debate last month, calling them “dramatically exaggerated.” People who live there have also denied the reports.
The takeover claims got stronger when a doorbell camera video showed six armed men entering a nearby apartment at the Edge of Lowry complex minutes before an August shooting that killed someone.
