They built an Airbnb empire in L.A. It was illegal, according to suit

By all accounts, Vladyslav Yurov was living the rags-to-riches American dream.

When he was 20 years old, the Ukrainian national came to the U.S. on a student exchange program and decided to stay, he said in a since-deleted Instagram video. He worked multiple low-wage jobs in Ohio, learned English and tried to make ends meet. He moved to Los Angeles and spent all his savings setting up his first rental unit for Airbnb, only to lose his lease two months later because, he said in the video, the arrangement wasn’t legal.

He didn’t give up. By age 29, Yurov was a millionaire, operating 28 “fully automated” short-term rentals on Airbnb and other hosting platforms, making more than $200,000 every month.

He even found a way to monetize his business model, running an online Airbnb “Hosting Academy” where clients paid to be taught his techniques. In an Instagram post, he wrote about how he helped students “make thousands with properties they don’t even own.”

Four weeks later, all of that came crashing down.

On June 20, Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office filed a lawsuit against Yurov, his companies Skysun and Hugs & Smile, and two business partners, alleging that they made more than $4 million by leasing properties from Los Angeles landlords on a long-term basis, then renting out the units as illegal short-term lodgings. The lawsuit alleges that they operated more than 30 illegal rental properties across L.A. since 2020, including at least 10 that are subject to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.

The login page for Airbnb’s iPhone app is displayed on a computer.

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

What made the rentals illegal, according to the city attorney? Among other things, the complaint alleges that Yurov and partners violated the city’s short-term rental ordinance — a measure designed to stop landlords from converting long-term housing into more lucrative short-term units — by renting out homes that they did not live in and that were subject in some cases to rent control.

The alleged scheme also hurt customers who booked listings from his firm, according to Airbnb posts reviewed by The Times. Clients said they paid for rentals in specific neighborhoods only to be pushed at the last minute into other areas they hadn’t chosen to stay in.

The lawsuit seeks up to $15 million in damages from Yurov and the other defendants.

After the city attorney’s office announced the lawsuit in a July 10 news release, Yurov’s Instagram page was taken down. His TikTok channel, however, was up as of July 23.

The alleged scheme was simple: The trio would claim that their properties were outside of L.A., such as in Glendale or West Hollywood, to circumvent the city’s ordinance and make their properties appear to be in more desirable locations, according to the lawsuit, which listed at least 14 rentals with fraudulent addresses.

Under this “bait-and-switch” method, they would allegedly disclose the real location of the rental unit only after the guest had booked it, claiming that they’d used a fake address because of “a licensing problem in Los Angeles,” the complaint alleges.

Under the city’s Home-Sharing Ordinance, which was adopted in 2018, hosts of short-term rentals must register with the city’s Planning Department and are allowed to rent out only their primary residence, where they live for more than six months out of the year.

Hosts can list only one unit at a time as a short-term rental and are barred from listing units that are rent-controlled, are covered by affordable housing covenants or have been removed from the long-term market because of the Ellis Act. The Ellis Act allows owners of rent-controlled properties to evict tenants if they take the units off the rental market (for example, by converting them to condominiums).

The ban also extends to accessory dwelling units built in Los Angeles after 2016.

Yurov’s company Skysun filed a preemptive lawsuit against the city attorney’s office on May 1, seeking a declaratory judgment and denying that it had violated the city’s Home-Sharing Ordinance, according to court records. That case is still pending.

The Alessio Apartments in Los Angeles.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Yurov, his attorney, and his associates didn’t respond to requests to comment. As of Friday, Yurov had not filed a response in court to the lawsuit’s allegations, according to the city attorney’s office.

Randy Renick of Better Neighbors LA, an advocacy group that pushes for tougher regulations on short-term rentals, said his organization has sent complaints to the city in the past about Yurov’s listings. But the tactics Yurov is accused of using aren’t unique to his organization. Better Neighbors found in a March 2024 analysis that Airbnb hosts across Los Angeles had at least 180 active short-term rental listings that misrepresented their locations in a “bait and switch.”

“There is still tremendous work to be done,” Renick said.

Although the one-bedroom studio apartment was advertised on Airbnb as a “Sunset studio in Marina Del Rey,” the investigator from the city attorney’s office got an email from the host revealing the “exact address” shortly after he booked a one-night stay in February.

The confirmation email from Airbnb claimed the address was 4201 Via Marina in Marina Del Rey, but the host told him it was actually 415 Washington Boulevard — the location of a rent-stabilized building in Venice called Marina Tower.

Half an hour later, the host named “Kyrylo” messaged him again with check-in instructions, including Wi-Fi and parking locations. Guests were to go to a utility pole in the alley behind Marina Tower and find a key inside one of the lockboxes. Any questions were to be directed to the “property manager,” named Anastasia.

But it was the host’s last instruction that caught the investigator’s attention: “Do not knock on the leasing office. They can cause you problems.”

That’s because the Marina Tower apartment was not supposed to be used for short-term rentals under the conditions of the lease, according to the lawsuit. And since the unit was rent-controlled, the city’s ordinance also prohibited it from being used as a short-term rental, the city alleged in the lawsuit.

A lockbox in an alley behind an Airbnb advertised as a “Sunset studio in Marina Del Rey,” is actually at 415 Washington Blvd.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Since October 2020, Yurov and his associates applied for units in Marina Tower under fraudulent names including “Nikolay Murov” and “Anastasiya Dobychina” to avoid background checks that could’ve revealed that they had been defendants in eviction proceedings in the past, the lawsuit alleged. After getting approved, they immediately advertised the units as short-term rentals.

The group mainly operated their business through an Airbnb host account called “Kyrylo Kutuzov,” which generated more than $4 million for the three business partners, the lawsuit states. They also operated Airbnb accounts under the names “Anastasia” and “Maka.” The “Kyrlo Kutuzov” account has been removed from Airbnb as of July 13.

It was a method they had allegedly used before, but it didn’t always go according to plan.

In one case, a family booked a rental unit they thought was in Burbank but learned was actually in North Hollywood, according to the complaint. They arrived at the home with their small children to find homeless people sleeping on the lawn, broken locks and unlocked windows. They checked into a hotel instead and fought with Yurov, Medvedeva and Nagi, who refused to refund their fee until the family threatened to get police involved, the complaint says.

Other potential guests raised red flags in comments on Airbnb.

Three days before a woman identified only as Rosa was supposed to check into the unit she’d rented through Airbnb, “Kyrylo” canceled her reservation, forcing her to book a last-minute rental somewhere else, according to a review she wrote on Kyrylo’s Airbnb profile in January.

Although Kyrylo told her he needed to cancel because of “pipe issues,” Rosa wrote, she had a friend who lived in the same building and told her no such issues existed. After she confronted Kyrylo, he told her the problem was “only in the apartment” and tried to book her at one of his other properties. Airbnb ended up apologizing and confirmed that Kyrylo was unable to prove that there was an issue in the unit, Rosa said in her review.

“Be careful booking this unreliable host,” she wrote. “You might be stuck having to book somewhere else last minute. A true inconvenience. Very stressful situation.”

The Alessio apartments in Los Angeles.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

In addition to Marina Tower, Yurov and partners advertised illegal rentals in the Alessio complex near LAX and the Circa apartments near Crypto.com Arena in downtown L.A., the complaint alleges.

Representatives of Marina Tower and Circa apartments didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story, and an Alessio leasing agent declined to comment.

Yurov has been served with multiple cease-and-desist letters in the past, the lawsuit says, and at one point he told the city attorney’s office that he was abandoning the short-term rentals. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, he moved the listings to other Airbnb accounts, including one under the username “Lubov.”

According to the lawsuit, none of the properties were the permanent residences of Yurov or his business partners. Instead, they advertised the listings on Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com without providing valid registration numbers, allegedly violating the Home-Sharing Ordinance for “thousands and thousands of days, across nearly 100 listings.”

Part of the problem, Renick of Better Neighbors said, is that Airbnb and the other hosting platforms don’t always confirm the locations or registration numbers of the rentals.

“Airbnb … will play along in this scheme,” Renick added.

Representatives of Airbnb and Booking.com didn’t respond to requests to comment. A VRBO spokesperson said that after learning about the lawsuit, the platform investigated and removed the host account and listings associated with Yurov.

Yurov and his associates also allegedly submitted false claims to Airbnb for payment under its Aircover program, which reimburses hosts for damage caused by guests to property and belongings, the lawsuit states. Between May 2022 and February, they allegedly submitted at least 23 fraudulent invoices from Yurov’s email account to Airbnb for reimbursement.

In Instagram videos, Yurov explained to viewers how he submitted claims through the Aircover program under the “Kyrylo” account, according to the complaint. In just Aircover claims alone, he said, he’d usually make between $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

An Airbnb listing advertised as a “Sunset studio in Marina Del Rey” was actually this Venice building at 415 Washington Blvd.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Airbnb’s website says it tries to verify that hosts, co-hosts and guests are who they say they are and that listings are accurate. However, the company acknowledged on its website that the verification doesn’t “guarantee that someone is who they claim to be.”

Airbnb’s site also says that the company doesn’t perform background checks on all users and warns users not to rely on it to find “all past criminal convictions or sex offender registrations … or other red flags.” Airbnb recently faced backlash after a CNN investigation revealed that the company knew about hosts spying on guests with hidden cameras.

Airbnb is not required to conduct background checks or user verification per its planning agreement with the city, according to a Los Angeles City Planning spokesperson. The department may suspend a host’s Home-Sharing Ordnance registration number for 30 days or longer after the host receives two citations issued by law enforcement agencies. Additional citations could lead to the host having their registration revoked and being barred from home-sharing for a year.

The litigation, Feldstein Soto said, is part of a larger push to crack down on illegal short-term rentals across L.A. after more than 25,000 rent-stabilized units were lost during Eric Garcetti’s time in office as mayor. Affordable housing units have been built at a much slower pace and higher cost than is needed to address the worsening housing crisis.

“We are trying to deter similar bad actors … and make sure that those housing units are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is provide an affordable roof over the heads of people who need a roof over their heads,” she said.

Last year, Feldstein Soto also sued the Nightfall Group, a company offering luxury “party houses” for short-term rentals, and its owner, Mokhtar Jabli, alleging that police were called more than 250 times to the rental properties in the Hollywood Hills area.

From the front seat of a Porsche, Yurov filmed a June 23 Instagram post commemorating his 30th birthday.

He confessed in the Instagram caption that he frequently felt left behind by everyone else after watching “the endless race for opportunities and watching all of these success stories online.” But he would tell himself that he’s at “the right time and at the right place.”

In the post, Yurov also marked another milestone: gaining another 10,000 followers on his new social media account.

“Thank you all for being with me on this journey,” he wrote. “We’re just taking a slow take off. Its just a beginning.”