Efraim Diveroli, Mark Kulick
From left: Efraim Diveroli has taken ownership of several Oklahoma apartment complexes from Mark Kulick following his default on multiple high-interest loans. (NonDoc)

Thousands of Oklahomans appear to have a new landlord after former arms dealer Efraim Diveroli exercised his option on an extremely high-interest loan to claim ownership of a large real estate portfolio, including apartments in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Stillwater and Bartlesville. Diveroli is best known for being portrayed by Jonah Hill in the film War Dogs, and his sudden acquisition of two dozen apartment complexes from another controversial figure has raised eyebrows in the state’s housing market.

Diveroli started selling weapons to the U.S. government as a teenager, with his grandfather telling CNN he was “a genius about anything to do with weapons.” He was later arrested for selling Chinese manufactured ammunition as Albanian ammunition, and he was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge.

As first reported by KJRH‘s Erin Christy, Diveroli’s latest project has thrust him into the Oklahoma housing market in an extremely aggressive and unusual manner: by foreclosing on a loan with an astonishing interest rate secured by an Oklahoma landlord’s real estate portfolio.

Christy reported that Diveroli made multiple loans to Oklahoma landlord Mark Kulick, one of which carried an interest rate of 7,000 percent compounding daily. When Kulick defaulted on just the 7,000 percent interest loan, his debt had surpassed $900 million. Delaware courts upheld Kulick’s debt obligations, and Diveroli’s investment company, YSA Investments 1, LLC, began transferring Kulick’s real estate assets from his holding companies to YSA.

Interestingly, Christy notes Kulick still appears to be managing the properties, making it unclear whether he is managing the properties for Diveroli or attempting to prevent the takeover of his entire portfolio.

Kulick’s name may also be familiar to Oklahomans across the state after Oklahoma Watch reported on his extensive financial and legal difficulties, which include a short-lived, high-stakes poker career. In 2024, his real estate portfolio included 39 properties and more than 9,900 units.

Oklahoma Watch interviewed former employees of Kulick’s Vesta Realty who described the company as “cult-like,” citing a company culture of ostracizing anyone who questioned Kulick. While Kulick reportedly lives a lavish lifestyle, some of his properties are described as “uninhabitable.”

The entrance of Diveroli into Kulick’s business ventures further complicates what one former partner of Kulick’s described as “a rat’s nest of fraud and deceit.”

‘Ponzi-like indicia’: Kulick’s alleged mismanagement

Ironically, an audit that appears to have been ordered by Diveroli revealed “Ponzi-like indicia” in Kulick’s accounting.

“There is a very high likelihood that the activities in this account are not accurately being tracked in the management’s accounting books because management is overdrawing the account constantly and sometimes multiple times per day. This account is behaving like an account for a business that is rapidly approaching insolvency as it lacks the working capital to maintain a positive balance as its payments are clearing,” auditors for American Fiduciary Services wrote. “The average daily balance in this period was $82,288 versus $58.7 million in outflows, indicating the account turnover ratio, otherwise [known] as the velocity of funds in this account was 357:1 per month during this period. The account had a day-end balance of $0 or less on 30 percent of the days in this period. This result is highly correlated with observations made in classic Ponzi-like schemes and is highly demonstrative of commingled sources and uses of funds.”

Since the audit’s revelations, at least two of Kulick’s former investors and business partners — Josef Loeffler and John Upperman — have filed lawsuits in Kansas and Oklahoma against him and his companies that essentially allege Kulick looted his real estate portfolio to cover personal expenses until his operation became insolvent. After investors required an independent controller to oversee the finances, Kulick fired them.

Upperman’s telling of Kulick’s spending are staggering:

  • $4.4 million spent on credit card and auto loans;
  • $11.4 million personally transferred to Kulick;
  • $1 million in gambling losses during a Las Vegas business trip;
  • $37.4 million in “credit-card charges with no apparent business purpose”;
  • $4.4 million to a Raymond James account;
  • two $1.5 million homes;
  • $25,000 to his personal barber; and
  • a $225,000 payment to professional gambler Kane Kalas.

The scope of Kulick’s alleged mismanagement does not stop with extravagant spending. He also entered into several highly irregular loans in order to keep himself solvent. In addition to allegations of fraudulent capital calls to investors, Kulick is accused of securing loans against future rents for short term cash and then defaulting on those loans, as well as taking loans from more local sources.

Court records indicate Kulick:

  • offered $412,225 of his companies’ rent receivable to Lend Bug LLC for a $275,000 loan, which he defaulted on in New York;
  • offered $449,700 of his companies’ rent receivable to Apollo Funding Co. for a $300,000 loan, which he defaulted on in New York;
  • offered $2,086,600 of his companies’ rent receivable to American Funding Services Inc. for a loan, which he defaulted on in New York;
  • offered $1,061,504 of his companies’ rent receivable to Dover Capital LLC for a $725,000 loan, which is under litigation in New York;
  • owed $2.5 million on a promissory note to Seaview 525 LLC in Tulsa;
  • owed $571,790 to Austin Business Finance LLC in Texas;
  • owes at least $500,000 on a promissory noted to General Holding LLC;
  • made $2.7 million dollars in payments to other “merchant cash advances” operations; and
  • owes $4 million to Ronald Marks, Tibor L. Nagy and Anna Nagy.

Loeffler’s Kansas lawsuit further reveals that Kulick entered into “heter iska” agreements with Loeffler, a type of investment that restructures “a loan so that it becomes an investment instead of a loan” in order to comply with Jewish religious law preventing the charging of interest between members of the faith. When Loeffler attempted to recover under the agreement, Kulick argued that the Kansas court should dismiss the claim because the “beis din” — a Jewish religious court — had jurisdiction to hear the dispute.

Loeffler’s attorneys called Kulick’s argument “remarkable for its audacity” since Loeffler had already submitted the case to the “beis din” and received “heter arko’os” — essentially permission from religious authorities to take the issue to civil court — after Kulick refused to appear before the religious court.

“The heter arko’os establishes that Kulick was properly invited to the very religious forum he now seeks to invoke, and that he refused to appear,” Loeffler’s attorneys wrote. “Having defaulted on his own halachic obligations, Kulick cannot now weaponize the beis din clause as a procedural shield against this action in secular court.”

The Oklahoma Department of Securities opened an investigation into Kulick on July 9.

The growing number of lawsuits, loss of investors and damage to Kulick’s reputation leaves his real estate portfolio in collapse with creditors circling as legal fights begin over the ownership of Kulick’s “Vesta Empire.”

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‘Do this the easy way or the hard way’

YSA Investments 1, owned by Efraim Diveroli, has taken over 11 apartment complexes in the Tulsa metro area from Mark Kulick, who defaulted on a series of high-interest loans with debts topping $900 million. (NonDoc)

According to Delaware court documents, Kulick met Diveroli in 2024 through “an acquaintance,” and Diveroli began loaning Kulick money in October 2024. Kulick managed to pay back his first loan, for $775,000, in January 2025, although he was late. By February 2025, Diveroli had loaned Kulick $4,775,000 over six notes when Kulick requested another loan for $1.5 million.

In order to secure his new loan, Kulick agreed to offer up “any asset controlled by any affiliate of mine.” Kulick ultimately defaulted on his $1.5 million loan as well as three additional loans for $300,000 at 1,500 percent interest compounded monthly, $365,000 at 960 percent interest compounded daily, and for $317,000 at 7,000 percent interest compounded daily. After his debt to Diveroli reached more than $930 million, Kulick defaulted.

In October 2025, Deveroli visited Kulick in Tulsa to inform him he owed Diveroli “well over a billion dollars” and Diveroli would be taking control of his real estate portfolio.

“Diveroli told Kulick that he could ‘either do this the easy way or the hard way,'” Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote. “As Kulick recalled, ‘They told me that basically they now own my entire portfolio.’ Kulick understood the ‘easy way’ would entail handing over to YSA the deeds to the properties in lieu of YSA seeking to foreclose on the properties. Kulick claims YSA offered cash if he were to hand over the deeds. Kulick understood the ‘hard way’ as involving litigation, as YSA had brought a draft complaint to the meeting. YSA also threatened to alert persons in Kulick’s professional network, including his Rabi (sic) and wife.”

McCormick notes Diveroli ultimately pursued “the hard way” and filed second mortgages on several of Kulick’s properties. Kulick challenged the mortgages and loan terms in Delaware courts, but he lost to Diveroli in June.

Since winning that lawsuit, Diveroli’s company has started transferring Kulick’s real estate portfolio from Kulick’s holding companies to Diveroli’s YSA.

Portfolio spans 3 states, 4 Oklahoma metros

YSA Investments 1, owned by Efraim Diveroli, has taken over 13 apartment complexes in the Oklahoma City metro area from Mark Kulick, who defaulted on a series of high-interest loans with debts topping $900 million. (NonDoc)

The exact extent of the Kulick-turned-Diveroli porfolio is hard to pin down, with court records indicating it includes properties across Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma property records show apartments in at least four Oklahoma metropolitan areas are now owned by Diveroli’s company.

The Tulsa metro has 11 properties now directly owned by YSA Investments 1, including:

The Oklahoma City metro has 13 properties directly owned by YSA and three owned by Kulick’s companies, which YSA now claims an interest in, including:

The Bryan Hill apartments in Bethany, Fairfax apartments in Midwest City and Muntage Apartment Homes in Oklahoma City are also owned by holding companies included on a list of entities YSA appears to have taken control of from Kulick.

The Stillwater area includes one property, Remington Ranch Apartments, which is currently owned by holding company Remington Ranch’s Best Living LLC. Remington Ranch is also currently being sued by the City of Stillwater and facing foreclosure. It is included on a list of companies YSA appears to have taken control of from Kulick.

The Bartlesville metro includes one property, Lexington Common Apartments, owned by holding company Bartlesville Best Living LLC. It is included on a list of companies that YSA appears to have taken control of from Kulick.

Multiple court cases, including bankruptcy filings, foreclosures and civil suits against Kulick’s holding companies make the long-term owner of these properties uncertain until litigation over Kulick’s portfolio is settled. In the meantime, Diveroli appears to be moving aggressively to secure his piece of the portfolio as Kulick’s real estate venture collapses, leaving Oklahomans to wonder how the former arms dealer will manage his potential newfound real estate portfolio that features thousands of Oklahoma housing units.

Representatives for YSA Investments 1 did not respond to an email request for comment prior to the publication of this article. Representatives for Vesta did not respond to a voicemail request for comment.

  • Tristan Loveless

    Tristan Loveless is a NonDoc Media reporter covering legal matters and other civic issues in the Tulsa area. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation who grew up in Turley and Skiatook, he graduated from the University of Tulsa College of Law in 2023. Before that, he taught for the Tulsa Debate League in Tulsa Public Schools.

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