Taylor Woods, of Idaho, former Queen Mary operator, charged in $1.2M investment scheme

The former operator of the historic luxury liner the Queen Mary was indicted in Nassau County Court on charges that he defrauded two Long Island men out of $1.2 million in an investment plan to buy distressed hotels, court records show.

Taylor Woods, 52, of Idaho, whose firm Urban Commons once ran the bankrupt Wagner Hotel in downtown Manhattan, pleaded not guilty to two counts of grand larceny and one count of a scheme to defraud. He was released Tuesday without bail during a brief morning arraignment in Nassau Court in Mineola.

“This is not a crime,” his lawyer, Bruce Barket, said after the hearing. “This is a business dispute. This is a failed investment opportunity in which my client lost more money than anyone else.”

According to Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly, in 2021, Woods approached two Nassau County investors, both of Locust Valley, with his plan to buy 18 hotels out of another hospitality company’s bankruptcy.

The two victims would invest in Woods’ Sky Holdings LLC, which would purchase, own and operate the properties and then sell half the portfolio to another company, Eagle Hospitality Trust, court papers show.

Through a high-pressure sales pitch, Woods told the men all but $10 million was in place for the deal to go forward and they needed to act quickly to be part of the deal, which was closing in a matter of weeks, according to Nassau prosecutors.

One investor ponied up $1 million for the bogus deal and the other bought in for $200,000, the district attorney’s office said.

Woods told the men he had everything lined up, when in reality, prosecutors said, they were the only two putting money into the deal.

“This defendant allegedly bilked two investors out of a total of $1.2 million using empty promises of a large-scale bankruptcy portfolio acquisition that he represented as fully funded and ready to move forward imminently,” Donnelly said. “Our investigation revealed his overtures were nothing more than a sham, the investment was not funded, and the defendant allegedly spent his victims’ funds. Investing always comes with risk, but it should never be because of untrustworthy partners engaging in fraud.”

Berritto Enterprises, LLC, which was identified in court records as a victim in the Nassau County case, sued Woods in October 2021 in Los Angeles bankruptcy court over $1 million lost in the same alleged scam.

He told the company that “all the capital was put in place” and he “felt good about it.”

In July 2021, after Woods did not respond to several of the company's inquiries about the deal, Berritto asked for the money back. He did not respond.

Documents show Woods has also been the target of other legal action.

In January, investors sued his company Open Commons LLC for an $8 million loan for the Wagner Hotel in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan, charging that he and his partners had failed to repay any of the money.

Woods' company took over the operation of the Queen Mary luxury ship, based in Long Beach, California, in 2016, according to bankruptcy records, but problems followed. In November 2021, a Delaware bankruptcy judge called Woods and his partner a “pair of fraudsters,” accusing them of exploiting a federal pandemic relief program they applied for in connection to the ship.

“They fraudulently obtained a PPP loan on behalf of the debtor without authority and absconded with the proceeds, leaving either the debtor or the United States to pay back the lender,” Judge Christopher Sontchi wrote in a decision.

The company no longer controls the ship.

Woods is due back in court March 13. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 15 years in prison.