For decades, a Columbus landlord now accused of renting out unsafe houses has woven a tangled
web of real-estate transactions in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Sam M. Vazirani said he complied with a judge’s order to sell his rental properties, but
authorities say he bought new properties, transferred some deeds to people he knows and sold others
to apparent associates. And he is still collecting rent money.

For that, Vazirani faces a probation-revocation hearing on Wednesday. In April, Franklin County
Environmental Judge Harland H. Hale prohibited Vazirani from owning or managing rental properties
after he pleaded no contest to 20 misdemeanor code violations at a Wisconsin Avenue house where
three people died in a 2011 fire. The house had been ordered vacated by the city two years earlier
because of safety hazards.

Vazirani was arrested on Jan. 30.

Last week, Franklinton tenant Ricky Hayman told
The Dispatch that Vazirani gave him a ride twice in recent months to cash his government
check so he could pay his rent. His name appears twice in a receipt book that police discovered in
Vazirani’s car during his arrest.

Another man staying with Hayman at the N. Yale Avenue house, Roger Thacker, said that Vazirani
offered to rent him another Franklinton house. Thacker later discovered that the house was still in
the name of a woman who died in 1998.

Authorities think Vazirani still has ties to 30 or so properties.

“Our real concern is, who is controlling these properties?” said Mike Roth, chief probation
officer for Franklin County Municipal Court.

Vazirani’s attorney, Sanjay Bhatt, said the probation office “overreached” in alleging the
violations, and that Vazirani has disposed of his properties.

“We can refute each and every one of these allegations,” Bhatt said. “He has truly divested
himself of all ownership interests.”

Public records raise another question: Who is Sam M. Vazirani?

The
Dispatch discovered through public-records searches that the 73-year-old Columbus resident
has the same Social Security number as a 49-year-old Florida woman. The number also closely
resembles the one Vazirani’s wife, Shewak, uses.

The Social Security Administration issued the number used by Mr. Vazirani between 1978 and 1980
in New York state.

The woman who shares that number was living in New York at the time and would have turned 16
then, a popular age for people to secure a Social Security card. It’s unknown where Vazirani lived
at the time.

The Florida woman could not be reached.

Bhatt said that the number is Vazirani’s and questioned whether someone was trying to steal his
identity. He said Vazirani emigrated from India to the United States in the early 1970s.

* * *

Vazirani faces more than a year in jail if Hale revokes his probation.

Demetrius Chappell; Chappell’s girlfriend, Jerrica Francisco; and her 4-year-old son, Dashawn,
died in the house at 90 Wisconsin Ave. on Christmas Eve 2011.

No one was supposed to be living there after city inspectors ordered the house to be vacated in
2009. The tragedy outraged a neighborhood and exposed flaws in the city’s system of tracking
dangerous houses. City inspectors had not checked to make sure the house had been fixed or remained
empty.

Vazirani served 30 days in jail. Hale told him to fix up and sell his rental properties.

But during his time on probation, authorities think Vazirani still owned, controlled or was
connected to properties. “This guy is one of a kind,” Roth said. “The truth means very little. But
money seems to mean a lot.”

According to property records, Vazirani has a long track record of buying and selling houses in
Columbus, with the majority in Franklinton, west of Downtown, and the Linden area to the north. He
has purchased at least 48 houses in Franklin County since 1988, all but five at sheriff’s
sales.

His real-estate business started with the purchase of two houses in 1988. Those houses, on N.
Kingry Street and Chittenden Avenue, still are tied to Vazirani through a company he remains linked
to, authorities said.

In 1998, he began scooping up deals at sheriff’s sales and then flipping them within months. By
the end of 2006, he had bought and sold 16 houses in some of Columbus’ poorest neighborhoods.

Vazirani made a collective profit of $782,000 on those 16 sales. Most of the buyers, however,
had trouble paying their mortgages; all but three fell into foreclosure.

In two deals, Vazirani sold the properties for exactly what he had paid for them. But in others,
he made as much as eight times his initial investment.

Most of those houses are dilapidated and beaten down by years of neglect.

Vazirani also has a habit of hiding his properties.

For example, he bought a house at 178 N. Princeton Ave. at a sheriff’s sale in 2006 but did not
record the deed until last year. Five months after that, Vazirani deeded the property to a
69-year-old man who has lived in Franklinton his whole life and has been evicted from at least four
houses for not paying rent.

The Princeton Avenue deed indicates the man paid $40,000 for the house. The county auditor’s
website says it is worth $27,500.

In 2006, Vazirani bought 119 Wisconsin Ave. at a sheriff’s sale and has yet to record the deed.
Property records show that the house remains in the name of its original owner, Clara J. Davis, a
woman who bought the house in 1920 and died in 1998.

Thacker said Vazirani tried to place him and his girlfriend into the 119 Wisconsin Ave. house
for $600 a month.

Thacker said Vazirani then offered to transfer the property to Thacker’s girlfriend. But when
Thacker and the girlfriend went to the county recorder’s office, they discovered that the house was
still in Davis’ name.

Bhatt said the deed to the Davis house wasn’t recorded because of “clerical issues” they are
trying to resolve.

Now, Thacker and his girlfriend, her stepson and his girlfriend and their 5-month-old live with
Ricky and Patty Hayman in the house at 89 N. Yale Ave., owned by CB Contractors.

Vazirani’s receipt book listed rent payments made by that couple as recently as Jan. 1.

Last year, Vazirani sold Thacker a house at 284 S. Davis. Now, Thacker has a burnt-out house in
his name. A November fire forced him out.

Thacker said he still has access to the house at 119 Wisconsin. He leaves the porch light on to
keep away thieves.

* * *

Last year, under orders to sell his properties, Vazirani deeded more than two dozen houses to
people who seem to have ties to him, including former tenants and residents who live near his
rental properties.

Among those he sold was 90 Wisconsin Ave., where the three people died in 2011.

Records indicate that he sold that property to Ronald Smith III for $3,900. Another man, Albert
Hart, obtained a building permit from the city to fix it up. He told
The Dispatch in December that he was buying the house and planned to move into it in
June.

Neighborhood leaders are concerned that many of the buyers don’t seem to have the financial
wherewithal to rehabilitate the properties, which are run down and in some cases boarded up. The
city’s code-enforcement office has active cases on nine of the homes on the probation officer’s
list.

Many of the buyers have lengthy eviction histories that show a pattern of not paying rent.

Vazirani also has a history of ignoring court orders.

Since 1992, he has been cited at least 13 times for housing- or health-code violations at his
rental properties. It took five contempt-of-court hearings over three years to force Vazirani to
comply with a judge’s orders to fix problems at a house at 936 W. Rich St.

Vazirani has paid fines, spent time in jail and been on probation on and off since 1992, yet
nothing seemed to sway him to bring his properties into compliance.

Take the house on Grasmere Avenue that he bought at a sheriff’s sale on Nov. 13. While under
orders to sell his properties, Vazirani bought that house for $36,500 and then deeded the property
to David Sandrock 13 days later for $7,500.

Sandrock’s address, according to the property records, is 88 N. Yale Ave., a duplex owned by CB
Contractors LLC.

Vazirani told probation officials on Jan. 8 that he has nothing to do with properties he sold to
CB Contractors. Yet his receipt book indicates that he received rent payments from tenants at three
CB Contractors properties in Franklinton.

“Sam Vazirani is running the operation behind the scenes,” Roth said.

Bhatt said that Vazirani collects rent on behalf of the owners of the houses.

CB Contractors was incorporated on Feb. 1, 2012, about a month after the Wisconsin Avenue fire.
Charles Aspell was listed as incorporating agent.

Aspell lives at 251 Clarendon Ave., a property owned by CB Contractors. According to paperwork
filed with the Ohio secretary of state’s office, the company buys, fixes and sells properties.

Roth said Aspell has no record of payments for the properties.

“Charles Aspell does not have the paperwork. He does not know what is going on.”

Interviewed at his house last week, Aspell said Vazirani has no control over the seven
properties in the CB Contractors name.

Asked how often he makes payments to Vazirani for the properties, he said, “Whenever I want to
pay him.”

Then Aspell said he has made no payments.

* * *

Columbus City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr. said his office and code enforcement should keep
better track of problem landlords. But he said the problem goes beyond that.

“What do you do with these people and the properties they own? It’s about the money. In the end,
to properly maintain property, it takes money.”

Some people are taking steps to deal directly with the rundown houses.

The Franklinton Development Association is buying a house at 936 W. Rich St., a property
Vazirani had owned until last year. The current owner, Cynthia Maynard, approached the association
about buying it.

She acquired it through a quit-claim deed in May 2012 for $800 from a man to whom Vazirani had “
gifted” the property three months earlier, according to the probation department’s statement of
violations.

The house will be demolished, said Jim Sweeney, the association’s executive director.

Vazirani’s future is less certain. Still, Roth said Wednesday’s hearing will provide him with an
opportunity for a new start.

“Ash Wednesday is a good day for repentance,” he said.

mferenchik@dispatch.com


@MarkFerenchik

jriepenhoff@dispatch.com


@JRiep