{"id":441301,"date":"2026-08-23T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441301\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T15:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:20:08","slug":"city-attorney-sues-operators-of-alleged-illegal-short-term-rental-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441301\/","title":{"rendered":"City Attorney Sues Operators of Alleged Illegal Short-Term Rental Network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"724\" height=\"483\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6251-1-1-2.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Getty. Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has filed a civil lawsuit<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Suit alleges unpermitted rentals and rent hikes exceeding 10% after wildfires.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Sarah Lin<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has filed a civil lawsuit against four people accused of running an illegal short-term rental operation spanning at least 30 properties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The defendants \u2014 Dylan Abekasis, Arie Abekasis, Rajaa Chraibi and Marcelle Melka \u2014 allegedly converted residential properties, including rent-stabilized units, into short-term rentals without proper permits, according to the complaint. The city says they used expired or invalid home-sharing registration numbers and falsely claimed some properties were located outside Los Angeles to avoid local rules. The units were advertised on Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lawsuit also alleges that after the January 2025 wildfires, the defendants raised rental prices by more than 10%, violating state and local price-gouging laws that limit increases during declared emergencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty. Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has filed a civil lawsuit Suit alleges unpermitted rentals and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-441301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}