Arnie Weissmann
Imagine: Your Los Cabos villa-rental business was growing nicely. Your inventory reached almost 100 properties, some of which rent for $35,000 a night.
And you've built a portfolio of services for hosts, handling marketing and bookings, rental management and maintenance. You even help hosts find additional properties to grow their businesses and offer interior decorating services.
One host, a Las Vegas gaming influencer with more than a million followers, worked with you to buy additional properties and liked the interior designs your wife created so much that he asked for help in designing a home he was building for himself in Las Vegas.
But one day it all turns upside down. The influencer steals all your contacts: guests, hosts, vendors, employees, real estate professionals, peers. He uses them to try to build his own competitive villa-rental business. He refuses to honor 24 of the bookings that you made for his properties but keeps the deposits; consequently, you have to pay out of your own pocket to relocate the guests to other villas.
To add to the distress, the influencer fashions himself as a Cabo villa-rental influencer and wages a multifront social media campaign to "warn" consumers not to book with you. Among a litany of false claims he makes is that the FBI is investigating you and that you engage in fraud, embezzlement, theft and failure to maintain proper financial records and accounting. He rants (obscenely) against you in videos he posts.
Your time is spent answering pointed questions from your network and trying to demonstrate that the accusations are false. Still, some villa owners pull their homes from your inventory. You even have to defend your real estate license before the board of the Multiple Listings Service.
Welcome to Mishan Andre's real-life nightmare.
He is the owner of Cabo Platinum villa rentals. The influencer is named David Oancea, aka "Vegas Dave."
If this were a he-said, she-said debate in which each party had valid complaints against one another, that's not how District Court Judge Timothy C. Williams in Clark County, Nev., saw it. In a searing 19-page judgement against the influencer last month, Williams ordered him to pay Andre and his wife, Danette Reid, more than $30 million.
Among Oancea's activities that Williams stated in the judgement was that Oancea (and/or the limited liability corporations he had established) had intentionally interfered with contractual relations, misappropriated trade secrets, engaged in business disparagement, breached an interior design contract, had repeatedly ignored an October 2024 permanent injunction by the judge against possessing and using Cabo Platinum's confidential homeowners list, ignored a second similar injunction, falsely claimed to have destroyed the misappropriated trade secrets, made false accusations in emails and social media posts reaching millions of followers in an effort to disrupt and harm Cabo Platinum's business and reputation, had published multiple advertisements masquerading as legitimate articles in various news publications targeting the Los Cabo tourism market and contacted guests directly and told them to cancel reservations with Cabo Platinum.
If there is a small silver lining for Andre, it is that Oancea did not get hold of Andre's list of travel advisors that Cabo Platinum works with.
The judgement includes actual damages of almost $10 million and punitive damage for oppression, fraud and malice. Interest brings the total above $30 million.
"There is no question that Oancea has acted with the intent to harm Cabo Platinum and its reputation," the judge wrote. "Oancea's conduct has been despicable and has subjected Cabo Platinum to cruel and unjust hardship."
Although Andre and Reid prevailed, it has been at significant cost: Andre estimates they've spent $2.5 million in attorney fees -- money that came out of the nest egg they were saving to build their dream house.
Meanwhile, Oancera has launched retaliatory lawsuits against the couple. Andre said he believes they have plenty of evidence to successfully defend themselves, but the hassle, and cost, will likely continue.
The couple has begun the process to try to assess where Oancea holds his assets. In the judgement, it was noted that Oancea owns $40 million in Los Cabos real estate and evidence was submitted that he spends lavishly on luxury goods, including a $500,000 watch and multiple Birkin bags.
Andre has begun a book about his experiences, tentatively called "The Price of Trust," in hopes that something similar won't happen to other property managers and has built a website, vegasdavelawsuit.com, that has the full judgement and other court filings as well as examples of Oancea's disparagement campaign.
Personally, I enjoy working in travel in part because the vast majority of people in it are remarkably trustworthy. Yes, elbows can be sharp and competitive fervor intense, but it's a relationship business and by and large, people behave ethically. Still, Andre's cautionary tale is a reminder that there are a few among us capable, in the words of Judge Williams, of despicable conduct, cruelty and injustice.