Real-estate clients claim they were cheated

A group of Bellevue real-estate professionals who are targets of a racketeering lawsuit filed by ING Bank are also defendants in two other lawsuits in state court brought by Russian-speaking immigrants who allege they were cheated in real-estate deals.

Nasim Shaykhutdinov and Olga Litovkina filed a lawsuit in Snohomish County Superior Court in January against Emerald City Escrow, Alla and David Sobol, Skyline Properties and Jacob Korn.

The Kazakh immigrants listed their Maple Valley property for sale with David Sobol and Skyline Properties in August 2006.

The immigrants allege the closing happened without their presence and that David Sobol gave the buyers tens of thousands of dollars in credit toward the deal without their permission.

And last April, Marina Bakhmet, a Russian immigrant, filed suit in King County Superior Court, alleging she was defrauded by Emerald City, Korn, David Sobol and KoBay Financial in connection with buying and developing a Medina property.

When the deal closed in May 2007, Bakhmet alleged, she wasn't given a closing statement and subsequently obtained three different closing statements — all of which show a $1.2 million purchase price, not the $775,000 price she said she thought she was paying.