Jeff Thompson, the D.C. Medicaid contractor and campaign contributor whose home and office was raided in March by the feds in connection with their investigations into campaign finance issues, has been quietly unloading several pieces of his District real estate portfolio during the last several months.
Just after Christmas last year, Euclid Street Partners, an LLC Thompson owns that was a frequent money order contributor to political candidates, sold a Columbia Heights rowhouse (sale price: $800,000). At the beginning of this year, Thompson also sold another property on 5th Street NW, according to one of his Realtors, Shalamar Muhammad.
Thompson also tried to sell a property in Capitol Hill that houses a hair salon earlier this year, but that deal is tied up in court. The prospective buyer, Charles Parsons, is suing Thompson, saying he improperly backed out of the deal. Thompson is countersuing, saying Parsons is improperly holding up his ability to sell. Muhummad was Thompson’s agent on that deal and was recently deposed as part of the lawsuit. During the deposition, Muhammad said she sold the Euclid Street property and the 5th Street property for Thompson. (She didn’t give an exact address of the 5th Street property in the deposition. LL has a call in to Muhammad and will update as necessary.)
More recently, Thompson listed his Crestwood home last month and is in the process of selling it (asking price: $1.175 million). Thompson is also trying to sell a plot of land on Poplar Point where he planned to house a catering company (asking price: $2.5 million).
Besides the real estate sell-off, Thompson is also in the middle of selling his health insurance company, Chartered Health Care, which has a contract with the District worth more than $300 million.
So why is Thompson selling so many things? Unknown. Thompson’s attorney has declined to comment since the raid.
During questioning from Parsons during the deposition, Muhammad agreed that Thompson preferred a cash sale and a quick settlement on the Capitol Hill property. But she added that “a lot of investors say that,” and that she didn’t think Thompson showed any type of urgency when selling his property. (Thompson initially had the property listed at $700,000 but agreed to sell it to Parsons for about half that amount.) Thompson still has a pretty sizeable real estate portfolio, which includes another million-dollar Crestwood home and a multi-million downtown office building that Chartered pays Thompson to lease.
And if you needed a reminder of how small a town this is: Muhummad says she met Thompson through the politically connected defense attorney A. Scott Bolden, whom she used to date. In the deposition, Muhammad says Bolden and Thompson are friends and that she would run into Thompson at social events, like “fundraisers for politicians.” (Also of passing interest, Muhammad used to manage a restaurant in Chicago for Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.)
Screengrab via C-SPAN