When the woman dubbed Chicago’s “worst landowner” was forced to sell off her real estate empire of vacant lots on the South and West sides as part of a legal settlement, city officials had hoped the deal would generate millions of dollars for its coffers and slow the spreading blight.
But the sale fizzled. And the city didn’t get a dime out of it.
Now, the city is suing the company that ran the auction, claiming the firm was negligent and incompetent and overvalued the land, which left the city hanging out to dry when the sale flopped.
The lawsuit, which is seeking more than $4 million in damages, marks the city’s latest attempt to wring money out of what officials have dubbed “extreme scofflaws,” a string of companies owned by Suzie B. Wilson and her sister Swedlana Dass. The companies amassed more than $15 million in unpaid tickets tied to the condition of their mostly-vacant lots.
Separately, the city is suing four law firms that represented the sisters, alleging their businesses paid the firms more than $326,000 while under a legal injunction that prohibited financial transactions.
A city spokeswoman declined to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit but shared a statement that said “the city will aggressively use every available tool to protect our residents and hold to account anyone whose actions have damaged our communities or exposed the city to risk.”
The legal action follows an investigation by Block Club Chicago and Illinois Answers Project last year that found the auction — the largest bulk land sale in the city’s recent history — fell short of expectations and left residents of some of Chicago’s poorest communities stuck living next to trash-filled vacant lots with no signs of a solution.
Wilson and Dass agreed to the sale as part of a $11.5 million settlement last year with the city in which they agreed to “wind up their affairs” and dissolve their companies. The city said it agreed to the settlement after it received the appraisal for the sisters’ land.
The sisters’ companies then hired Northbrook-based Hilco, which was responsible for appraising the properties and putting them up for sale.
Hilco declined to comment for this story.
According to the lawsuit, Hilco estimated that the sisters’ real estate empire had a “bulk sale market value” of $17.8 million, and the average value of each lot was $28,371. In all, 600 lots would sell in the first year and the remaining 212 would go in the second.
However, the appraisal “did not research or consider the significant number of vacant lots that were available for sale in the same areas of these lots and remained unsold for considerable periods of time,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit cites the more than 1,000 unsold lots owned by the Cook County Land Bank and more than 7,000 vacant lots owned by the city itself, “most of which are in the same neighborhoods as the debtors’ lots.”
After reviewing the appraisal, which predicted a windfall in sales, the city approved the legal settlement. A New York City investment fund agreed to provide a loan of up to $4 million to facilitate the bankruptcy and to prepare the land for sale.
Hilco received $300,000 up front and a 7% commission from all proceeds of each sale, up to the first $7 million in sales, with the commission increasing after that, according to the contract.
A disappointing auction followed.
Just 200 of the roughly 800 parcels were sold in Hilco’s auction last spring, which the city says generated less than $3 million, not even enough to cover the bankruptcy loan. The sale left more than 500 vacant lots, doing little to combat the blight in disinvested neighborhoods on the South and West sides.
All of the money generated from the sale went to “administrative expenses, including hundreds of thousands to Hilco …,” according to the lawsuit.
Hilco’s “breach and negligence were exposed by the pallid reality of the sale,” the lawsuit reads.
While the city got no money from the sale itself, it did receive more than $1 million in upfront payments under the terms of the settlement with the sisters.
Court documents show the lawsuit was filed a couple weeks after a federal judge gave the city legal standing to work with the bankruptcy lender to pursue alleged violations of the bankruptcy code, which could help the city to recoup more money.
On the same day the Hilco lawsuit was filed, the city also sued four law firms — DeVore Radunsky and Landsman Saldinger Carroll, both based in Chicago, and national law firms Thompson Hine and ArentFox Schiff, which represented the Wilson sisters’ real estate companies in the bankruptcy case.
The city alleges the Wilson sisters’ businesses transferred more than $326,000 to the law firms in violation of a legal motion the city made to identify and seize their assets.
The lawsuit filed against the two national law firms notes that ArentFox Schiff sought a conflict waiver from the city to represent the Wilson sisters, since the firm had previously represented the city in “bond financing, transactional and litigation matters.”
“ArentFox knew it needed the waiver, requested the waiver, had the waiver denied and yet contracted to represent the debtors anyways. Worse still, it was then paid with funds its preexisting client — the city — had frozen, thus directly harming the city,” the lawsuit states.
Messages left for the four law firms were not returned.
As for the sisters, Suzie B. Wilson has since purchased a $950,000 home in Bradenton, Fla., where she now lives, according to the lawsuit. Swedlana Dass lives in suburban Northbrook.
Neither sister responded to a request for comment.
The recent lawsuits are the latest controversy for Wilson and Dass, who have been caught in a legal web since 2023. That’s when Block Club and Illinois Answers first revealed they had racked up more ticket debt than any other Chicago property owner for allowing hundreds of South and West side properties to become filled with trash, weeds and rats.
Since then, the city has filed several multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the sisters, claiming the properties were used as dump sites for tires and junk cars. Following the lawsuits, the sisters’ companies filed for bankruptcy. With approval from a bankruptcy judge, Wilson and Dass agreed to auction off all 812 of their Cook County properties to pay down their debts.
The lots that did sell went to a mix of buyers, some with plans for the properties that could take years to get off the ground. The buyers included neighbors who had been caring for the properties for years out of their own pockets, city agencies and real estate speculators, according to an investigation by Block Club and Illinois Answers.
Sales followed greater real estate trends in the city, with investors buying properties in hotter real estate markets such as Garfield Park and South Chicago while lots in underinvested areas went unsold.
The auction of Wilson’s properties even captured the attention of Mayor Brandon Johnson. He highlighted the sale in his October budget address but got the facts wrong on what happened.
“At the beginning of this year — some of you may remember this — we took on the worst landowner in Chicago, Suzie B. Wilson,” Johnson said to applause. “We took her to court and we won back millions of dollars for taxpayers and more than 800 lots across the South and West sides of the city of Chicago.”
