Former Arms Dealer Launches Takeover Of Heartland Apartment Portfolio

The two worlds of Marc Kulick, an Oklahoma-based developer and former high-stakes gambler, have collided to create a vicious onslaught of lawsuits, including racketeering allegations, and foreclosures.

Kulick is being sued by business partners and investors after defaulting on high-interest loans he took from Efraim Diveroli, the convicted felon and former arms dealer who inspired the 2016 Jonah Hill comedy War Dogs.

Diveroli responded by placing second mortgages on all of the properties in the portfolio of Vesta Capital, the multifamily firm Kulick started with partners in 2017.

Since then, management was replaced at 10 properties in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by Diveroli’s team with help from local police, according to another lawsuit filed by Kulick.

The legal barrage, which includes foreclosure proceedings on at least nine properties, follows what Kulick's former partners allege in separate lawsuits was a yearslong fraud he operated to use cash from Vesta Capital to fund a lavish lifestyle, poker losses and more.

Kulick sees things differently, telling Bisnow in an interview this week that he operated in good faith and is now trapped in a hostile takeover of the empire he built. He’s actively fighting Diveroli’s company, YSA Investments, in court for control of more than 30 assets, while his former business partners sue to try to force him out of the company. 

“I should have done a lot of things differently, but what I really should have done was just started giving properties back to the bank when all these troubles started happening, instead of borrowing money and trying to keep everything afloat,” Kulick said. “But I still, to this day, do not understand how people would have rather me eviscerated investor equity.” 

Fannie Mae has initiated foreclosure proceedings on eight properties in the more than 9,000-unit portfolio that includes around 35 owned or managed properties, and at least nine of the holding companies that own the apartments under Vesta’s structure have filed for bankruptcy, according to documents uncovered by banking intelligence platform Atrium.ai. 

As the legal filings and deed documents pile up, that investor equity is very much on the line. It all started with an insurance issue. 

“My master insurance policy had, I think it was a 43% or 44% increase from 2023 to 2024, and we were not prepared for it,” Kulick said. 

He said he was unable to find traditional financing, with lenders demanding more collateral than the assets themselves, and was reaching deep into his contact list to raise capital. 

“I was getting denied, and people wanted collateral, and I couldn't give them the proper collateral,” he said. “So a friend of mine said, ‘Have you seen the movie War Dogs?’ And I said yes. And he said Efraim Diveroli's family office does loans.”

Kulick took his first loan from Diveroli in October 2024 and his last in July 2025, which included a 7,000% interest rate that compounded daily, according to data collected by Atrium.ai. He defaulted on the rapidly ballooning debt, and YSA used language in the last loan document pledging Kulick's interest in Vesta, where he is a majority shareholder, to place second mortgages on assets. 

YSA took over daily operations at Vesta’s Tulsa properties with the help of the local police on July 20, according to a legal challenge filed by Kulick. YSA employees showed up at the properties and put new management in place while ejecting the existing management. Tenants at the properties have been directed to make rent payments through a portal on YSA’s website. 

YSA Investments didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment. 

Kulick is fighting to get the apartments back, arguing that the police shouldn’t have gotten involved in a civil matter where a court had issued a stay for any relief. 

“We all know a basic principle that we're taught when we're kids: Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” he said. 

Now that YSA has taken over management, it’s up to Vesta to work out the complicated deed status to force them out, Kulick said. 

“They're saying, ‘We're not going to court to get rid of you. You're going to have to go to court to get rid of us,’” he said. 

Kulick founded Vesta in 2017 with his primary business partner, Josef Loeffler, and with capital from John Upperman. The company's assets are focused in Oklahoma, with some properties in Kansas and two in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to its website. 

The litany of legal claims is a fall from grace for Kulick, 38, who was listed in Oklahoma Magazine’s “40 Under 40” column in 2025 and chosen to represent real estate in the magazine’s “Faces Of Oklahoma” feature in 2024. 

After resisting the idea for more than a year, Kulick said the Chapter 11 bankruptcies offer the clearest path to clearing up ownership arguments and settling debts.   

Kulick's business partners accuse him of shuffling money between funds in an attempt to keep up on bills after redirecting millions of dollars in proceeds to personal accounts. Upperman’s civil charges were filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as a RICO case. A forensic accountant who looked at Vesta’s books on behalf of Miami-based YSA found significant deficiencies. 

Vesta’s primary operating account had an average daily balance under $100K against $59M in outflows, and the account fell to zero or negative on 30% of business days, the forensic audit found. Vesta eventually lost access to the widely used Automated Clearing House payment network, making it significantly harder to collect rents, according to Loeffler’s suit.

Kulick also began participating in livestreamed poker games in January 2025 and built net winnings to $460K that month before two bad days at the table brought the total to $20,600, according to the website Highroll Poker. 

His career on the livestream lasted less than two months, and Kulick told Bisnow that he walked away with roughly $1M in winnings, adding that more than half went back into his firm. He hasn’t done any gambling in more than a year, he said. 

At the start of 2025, Vesta Realty allegedly paid a combined $3.1M worth of Kulick’s credit card debt and car loans, and $2.5M was sent directly to his personal accounts, according to the accounting review filed in Delaware Chancery Court by YSA, where Kulick unsuccessfully sued to try to remove the second mortgages placed against Vesta’s properties. 

“I do not get a salary. I don't know to the extent that there may have been a couple instances where expenses of mine were paid accidentally out of Vesta Realty, and that shouldn't have happened,” Kulick told Bisnow. 

The last loan agreement Kulick signed with YSA also included provisions that he says pledged his ownership stake in Vesta, but which YSA has interpreted as giving it claim to the firm’s entire multifamily portfolio. YSA claims that Vesta is on the hook for the now $930M in principal and interest Kulick’s debt has ballooned to. 

Vesta’s untenable debt load is apparent in its filing for bankruptcy for Jenk's Best Living LLC, which covers the Thrive Jenks apartments in Jenks, Oklahoma. The company lists more than $500M in claims against its estimated $10M to $50M in assets. 

The list of creditors lays bare the problem, with the $921M unsecured claim from YSA sitting alongside service providers and vendors that Vesta owes cash to. A valet parking entity wants $3,528, and paintmaker Sherwin-Williams is due $7,558. The largest unsecured claim behind YSA is a $14,807 balance with Lowe's Pro.

YSA’s second mortgages are subordinated debt to the primary mortgages from banks — seven banks have $169M in total exposure, led by Bancorp Bank at $44M and Associated Bank at $37M, according to Atrium.ai data — but they set the stage for a lengthy legal fight over ownership. 

Kulick’s bankruptcy filings and a more recent case he filed against YSA in a Texas bankruptcy court aim to cut out Diveroli’s firm and reclaim Vesta’s properties, then Kulick plans to deal with the rest of the foreclosure suits and debt owed through the Chapter 11 process.

Loeffler's suit says Kulick's already been removed as Vesta's manager because of the fiduciary breaches in March, but Kulick said he has a plan for the future of Vesta. 

“I have a singular focus right now, which is to get rid of YSA,” he said. “We have a very credible game plan and solution that we are working towards. There have been multiple shareholders involved in those solutions. It's not just me.”