Hussain family motel for sale
Prestige Limo owner’s Crest Inn listed for $1M; attorneys seek to stop deal
The family at the center of the Schoharie limousine crash appears to be tr y ing to sell the ramshackle Crest Inn Suites & Cottages motel in Gansevoort for $1 million.
The property, which for years has plag ued code enforcement of ficers in the town of Wilton, has been listed confidentially by a Ballston Spa rea l estate agent that has done real estate work for the Hussain family in the past.
The same family owns Prestige Limousine, whose stretch Ford Excursion was the vehicle in the October 2018 crash that killed 20.
The motel is being listed by Trevett Group of Ballston Spa.
Anna Baker, the agent handling the sale, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Complicating the issue is the fact that about nine years ago, the Hussain family put the property deed in the name of Malik Riaz Hussain, a wealthy real estate tycoon from Pakistan who allegedly has ties to the Capital Region’s
Hussain family.
Nauman Hussain, whose family purchased the motel in 2006, managed Prestige in the months before the crash af ter his father, Shahed Hussain, traveled to Pakistan in March 2018 to recover from heart surger y. All 18 passengers in the limo and two bystanders in the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Countr y Store died. It was the worst highway transportation disaster in the U. S. in more than a decade.
Nauman Hussain, 29, was indicted on 20 counts of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by a Schoharie County g rand jur y. Prosecutors allege Hussain knew the Excursion was unsafe when he rented it out that day to a g roup of 17 friends from Amsterdam who were going to a brewer y in Cooperstown for a bir thday celebration.
The identity of the potentia l buyer of the Crest Inn Suites remains unknown. The property is valued by the town of Wilton at $953,200; its assessed value, determined by the same entit y for ta x purposes, is $857,900.
Hussain ag reed at his April arraig nment in Schoharie County Court that he would live at the motel until his tria l.
Shahed Hussain, who worked as an undercover informant for the FBI on anti-terrorism cases in the United States and abroad, bought the motel in 2006 under his wife’s name. In 2010, the deed was put in the name of Malik Riaz Hussain, the Pakistani real estate tycoon that Shahed Hussain has called his brother. Shahed Hussain may be Malik Riaz Hussain’s brother-in-law, although the exact connection has never been confirmed.
Despite being the legal owner of the limo company, Shahed Hussain has never been accused by prosecutors of wrongdoing. He has not responded to repeated attempts by the Times Union to contact him in Pakistan, where he has remained since before the crash.
Malik Riaz Hussain, who founded a real estate development firm called Bahria Town that builds gated communities in Pakistan, has recently been named a defendant in the civ il lawsuits f iled on behalf of the crash victims’ families against Nauman and Shahed Hussain and their limo business.
Michael Smrtic, a Gloversville attorney who filed one of those civ il lawsuits that named Malik Riaz Hussain as a defendant, said he and other attorneys involved in the civ il suits were tr y ing to block a sa le to preser ve a potentia l Hussain family asset.
Smrtic on Tuesday, alluded to possible lega l action in state Supreme Court.
Smrtic represents the family of Matthew Coons, one of the victims of the Schoharie crash. In a civ il lawsuit f iled earlier this month in state Supreme Court in Fulton County, Smrtic claims that Malik Riaz Hussain was an owner of the limousine business with Shahed Hussain and was “at least a partia l f inancier ” of the limo operation, although the suit does not detail the financial connection between the two men.