A man accused of a slew of city code violations at apartment buildings boarded up by Aurora officials — a police official later said the move was also designed to curb the criminal activities of a Venezuelan gang — fired back in court documents, claiming the city unfairly targeted him because he is an Orthodox Jew and accusing the officials of enforcing the rules selectively.

Aurora officials have maintained that their actions resulted from numerous health and safety violations at the complexes.

A spokesperson denied the allegations that religion played a role in the city’s actions.

Zev Baumgarten, who is connected to CBZ Management, faces 26 Aurora municipal code violations that included maintaining a “substandard building or premises.”

The management company is tied to New York-based Shmaryahu Baumgarten and purportedly Baumgarten, who once owned multiple properties in the metro area — three in Denver and four in Aurora — some of which the city shuttered, citing recurring code violations.

Baumgarten was due in Aurora Municipal Court on Friday morning but did not appear. His attorney, Stanley Garnett, told Municipal Judge Brian Whitney that Baumgarten had moved out of state to “an undisclosed location.”

The precaution was likely in response to an incident in 2023, in which Baumgarten was attacked at one of the properties and suffered lacerations and contusions at the hands of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members.

With Baumgarten’s absence, the judge scheduled a pretrial hearing for June.

“I will have him here on the eleventh,” Whitney said.

The city has two weeks to respond to Baumgarten’s motion.

On Friday, the city denied targeting Baumgarten because of his religion.

“As you know, the city has compiled extensive documentation over the last several years to validate the numerous problems at the properties connected to CBZ Management and its principals, including Mr. Baumgarten,” Ryan Luby, a city spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. “We have shared those records publicly. The city only learned of Mr. Baumgarten’s latest accusations against the city in the last 18 hours.”

Luby added: “Despite many interactions with Mr. Baumgarten and his teams of attorneys over the years, this is the first time the city has heard these new claims. We have no indication that any of them hold any merit.”

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman previously described the situation at the apartment complexes as the result of “slumlord” conditions.

The owners disputed the assertion in court documents, asserting they had spent more than $390,000 through the end of 2023 on building improvements to the Nome Street property alone.

In the filing, Baumgarten said city officials targeted him although “he was neither the owner nor even a property manager,” according to his motion for expanded discovery.

He told the court he and his family moved to Lone Tree in 2019 and “are members of the Jewish faith and follow Chabad Orthodox Judaism.” He dresses in the traditional Orthodox Jew fashion, with a long beard and yarmulka on his head, his filing said.

“Mr. Baumgarten’s religious affiliation has not gone unnoticed by the City and may even be the motivating factor behind its aggressive enforcement of municipal ordinances against Mr. Baumgarten,” the motion said.

In his filing, Baumgarten alleged two separate incidents involving two city officers, in which one allegedly made a “thinly veiled allusion to Jewish east coast wealth,” and another allegedly cited his religion as an explanation why the officer was “being so hard on him.”

He also submitted a chart of similarly situated properties with “arguably similar crime rates” and argued that the data “reveals obvious selective enforcement.”

A Brooklyn-based company, CBZ owns 11 properties in Colorado, including the two where the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua operated: The Aspen Grove Apartments on Nome Street (under the company Nome Partners LLC) and The Edge at Lowry on Dallas Street (Five Dallas Partners LLC).

The company also operated, Whispering Pines, owned by Whispering Pines Partners LLC, BZMRS LLC and 733Dekalb Ralty LLC subsidiaries of CBZ Management.

‘The city reneged’

Officials in February shuttered The Edge at Lowry in a high-profile press conference with Aurora Police Department Chief Todd Chamberlain in a cockroach-infested apartment.

The city sought to close the six buildings on the property that house 72 units. The police said TdA gang members kidnapped and tortured a couple on the property in December.

Chamberlain asserted that, without closing the properties, the “criminal behavior will flourish, making living conditions untenable for any law-abiding residents in this neighborhood.”

With rents between $1,200 and $1,400 — according to Baumgarten’s filing — all the properties “are considered ‘low-income’ and like much low-income housing across this country, are located in historically higher crime areas” in the city.

The city’s move marked the second time Aurora officials shut down a complex operated by CBZ Management, a company that became the focal point in the national debate on illegal immigration after reports linked TdA to criminal activities in Colorado.

Originally a Venezuelan prison gang, TdA has a growing presence across Latin America and the U.S. Authorities have said the gang’s members are involved in a myriad of criminal activities, including drug trafficking, kidnapping, money laundering, extortion, and human trafficking — specifically targeting immigrant women and girls.

Gang members appear to have infiltrated the U.S. by embedding themselves in with Venezuelans fleeing President Nicolás Maduro’s oppressive regime. About 8 million have fled the country with more than 500,000 estimated to be living in the U.S.

Denver began seeing an unprecedented number of immigrants arriving in the Mile High City two years ago. Since then, more than 40,000 have come with bus, plane and train tickets for immigrants suggesting about half have stayed.

Last August, officials shuttered Aspen Grove, a 99-unit complex near the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, leaving about 300 people, mostly immigrants, homeless.

Before its closure, Aurora officials reached an agreement with Baumgarten to drop all the charges against him in exchange for selling the property and assuming $60,000 of the costs to board up and secure the building, emails obtained under the Colorado Open Records Act show.

“Though the Properties’ owners fulfilled all their obligations, the City reneged,” Baumgarten said in court documents.

As an example of the alleged behavior targeting him, Baumgarten cited a phone call with the supervisor of the Aurora Code Enforcement officers in late 2022. He asked the supervisor why the city “was being so hard on him” — to which the official “retorted ‘because you are an Orthodox Jew.’ ”

Baumgarten called the alleged episode an “alarming and disturbing statement.”

City officials have alleged the properties were so neglected as to be uninhabitable. Chamberlain, the police chief, has described the living conditions as inhumane.

Aurora city officials filed a criminal nuisance case against Baumgarten in December. According to the city’s petition, the Edge at Lowry had been plagued with violent crimes and quality of life issues since September 2023.

Denver Gazette city editor Dennis Huspeni contributed to this report.