Dr. Oz accused of money grab as settlement talks fail in ugly inheritance battle
Fighting back against this claim are Dr. Oz and a second sister, Seval Oz, of California.
Dr. Oz and his sisters are embroiled in a multi-million-dollar inheritance battle in the US and Turkey
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- Mehmet Oz and his two sisters are in an inheritance battle spanning both US coasts and Istanbul.
- Dr. Oz and one sister are accusing another sister of forging their father’s will and looting millions from his estate.
- That sister counter-claims Dr. Oz has deprived her of years of rental income from two NYC condos.
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New court papers in Manhattan reveal that TV personality-turned Pennsylvania GOP congressional candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz is embroiled in an intensifying inheritance battle in the US and Turkey — complete with accusations of a forged will and millions of dollars looted from an Istanbul bank account.
“A complex and fact-intensive family drama,” a lawyer for Dr. Oz called it in papers filed Monday night.
On one side of the battle is Nazlim Oz, who lives in Istanbul but is suing her brother in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
She said in her ongoing 2020 lawsuit that for more than three years, the former “Dr. Oz Show” host has failed to pay her $15,000 a month.
She alleged that the money is her share of the rental income from a pair of three-bedroom, Upper East Side condos once owned by their father Mustafa, a wealthy Turkish surgeon and investor.
Fighting back against this claim are Dr. Oz and a second sister, Seval Oz, of California.
They said in their own court papers that Nazlim is the real thief and allege Nazlim began looting their father’s bank accounts in late 2018 — as he lay dying in an Istanbul hospital.
Dr. Oz, his California sister and their widowed mother, Suna, are now of one mind in believing that Nazlim forged the father’s signature, and has secreted millions of dollars away in Holland, India, and the Cayman Islands, they said in court papers.
A Turkish handwriting expert has confirmed the forgery, and the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office is investigating, Dr. Oz alleged.
And as to the monthly $15,000 Nazlim claimed she’d received from 2011 until their father’s death, when Dr. Oz took over the condos’ management and allegedly started stiffing her out of payments? Nazlim has not produced a single check, wire transfer record, deposit slip, or bank statement showing she ever received any rental income while the father was alive, Dr. Oz argued.
Those rents were paid directly to the parents’ account in Istanbul until the father’s death, and are now being held in the New York bank account of “Oz LLC,” pending an outcome to the inheritance dispute, he said in court papers.
“The available evidence strongly suggests (if not proves outright) that Nazlim never received any monthly $15,000 distributions at all,” Dr. Oz said in a sworn affidavit filed Monday night.
“This is also one of many issues deeply intertwined in our family’s ongoing litigation in Turkey,” he said in the affidavit, “in which it is alleged that Nazlim stole millions of dollars from our father, including rents [from the two Manhattan condos] that had been deposited into our parents’ accounts — the very same rents she now claims I have been depriving her of.”
Nazlim has denied any wrongdoing; her lawyer in the New York lawsuit declined to comment to Insider Tuesday. She is asking a Manhattan judge to issue an immediate ruling in her favor.
Dr. Oz, in turn, is asking that the condo-rent dispute be put on hold until the inheritance battles in Turkey are resolved. His lawyer, Michael J. Cohen, said the next step in the New York lawsuit will be for the judge to set a date for oral arguments.
Dr. Oz accused of ‘money grab’ as settlement talks fail in ugly inheritance battle
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- Dr. Oz is fighting his Istanbul-based sister over the rental income from two Manhattan apartments.
- The TV doctor-turned-Senate candidate is making a ‘money grab,’ his sister’s lawyer said Thursday.
- The rent squabble is part of a multi-million-dollar inheritance battle spanning the US and Turkey.
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Settlement talks ended without agreement Thursday in the New York portion of an ugly, cross-continental battle over the multi-million-dollar family fortune of TV personality-turned-Pennsylvania GOP senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Oz and his Istanbul-based sister, Nazlim Oz, were not present as their lawyers clashed in a Manhattan courtroom, but in one heated moment, Oz was accused by his sister’s lawyer of making a “grab” for the rental income from two condos in the city’s Upper East Side.
“This is what I call a money grab,” Nazlim Oz’s lawyer said during an otherwise calm hearing before New York Supreme Court Justice Suzanne Adams, accusing Dr. Oz of unilaterally stowing the disputed rent in a private account instead of letting a judge or jury decide who gets it.
The harsh words and settlement collapse were the latest development in an ongoing battle over millions of dollars left by the squabbling siblings’ father, Mustafa Oz, a wealthy Turkish surgeon and investor who died in 2019.
Dr. Oz meanwhile remains a contender in another heated and controversy-dense battle — the contest for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in which Democratic opponent John Fetterman most recently slammed him as a “puppy killer.”
Oz personally owns at least 10 properties, including a New Jersey mansion and a Pennsylvania farmhouse he claims as his residences.
In the 2020 lawsuit on the docket Thursday, his sister Nazlim Oz alleges that the former “Dr. Oz Show” host is failing to forward to her the combined $15,000-a-month rental income for two additional properties, a pair of three-bedroom apartments that had been owned by their father.
Dr. Oz counters that his sister is under investigation by Turkish authorities for allegedly forging the father’s signature; on Thursday Dr. Oz’s lawyer asked the judge to let that much larger investigation play out before deciding the apartment matter.
Dr. Oz and his California-based sister, Seval Oz, have also sued the Istanbul-based sister in the Turkish courts, alleging she has looted $2.9 million of their father’s money and stashed it in accounts in Holland, India and the Cayman Islands.
“Dr. Oz was acting prudently, in light of what we’ve seen in the Turkish matter,” Dr. Oz’s lawyer, Michael J. Cohen, told the judge Thursday in asking that the apartment rental lawsuit be for now put on hold.
Besides, Cohen argued — there’s zero evidence that the Istanbul-based sister ever received income from the two condos, even when their father was alive.
“While Nazlim claims that Dr. Oz has cut off her distributions, it in fact appears that she was never receiving any distributions,” Cohen said.
The documents also show that the apartments aren’t generating anywhere near $15,000 a month, he added.
But the sister’s lawyer, Laurence J. Lebowitz, noted that it would be unfair to put the rent battle on ice until the Turkish authorities and courts complete their work.
“There’s no telling when the Turkish inheritance matters will be resolved,” Lebowitz said, adding that allegations that Nazlim committed forgery and theft are, “by no means proven.”
The judge did not set a date for a decision on Dr. Oz’s request to hold off on, or “stay,” his sister’s lawsuit pending resolutions in Turkey.
“The discussions were preliminary,” the lawyer for Nazlim Oz said when asked about the settlement talks. “There is nothing of substance to report at this time.” The lawyer for Dr. Oz did not respond to a request for comment.
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