Name: How a $140 Million Crypto Real Estate Empire Fell Apart
Uploaded: 2026-07-28T16:00:00Z
Duration: 23 min 20 s
Description: WSJ’s Tomas Navia investigates how RealToken, a crypto company that pitched itself as the future of real estate, went from attracting thousands of investors to liquidating its $140 million portfolio.

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WSJ’s Tomas Navia investigates how RealToken, a crypto company that pitched itself as the future of real estate, went from attracting thousands of investors to liquidating its $140 million portfolio. Illustration: June Bang

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260727/90ef725b-968f-4e97-91ae-c65f0fae656a/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

WSJ’s Tomas Navia investigates how RealToken, a crypto company that pitched itself as the future of real estate, went from attracting thousands of investors to liquidating its $140 million portfolio.

How a $140 Million Crypto Real Estate Empire Fell Apart

We've tokenized 1,500 units in the United States. We're starting to have a portfolio around $90 million. We created the industry.

$13 million in rent distributed.

What was the condition of some of these homes?

It varied, but they all needed work. We were promised funds to rehab those that never materialized.

RealToken sent one of their contractors who installed this hot water tank. I came home and I smelled the gas.

He was paid for this property, yet they don't own that property.

I don't care that it's crypto, I don't care that you sold tokens. The question is how are you maintaining them? How are you managing them? If we don't make them stop, they don't stop.

I've been investigating this company called RealToken. RealToken is a crypto real estate investment company. It was founded by two brothers, Remy and Jean-Marc Jacobson. They'd buy properties in the United States and tokenize them and sell shares of them across the blockchain, exclusively to foreign investors. But over the course of our reporting, we found inconsistencies in what RealT was telling investors and the reality on the ground. In some cases, it's not clear where the money RealT used to pay investors actually came from. Once pitches the future of real estate, the company was unraveling in real time. It's now liquidating its entire portfolio, valued at an estimated $140 million.

The neighborhood was beautiful when I first moved over here, but over the years, that declined. My home and other homes were created in a portfolio for RealT with some type of cryptocurrency. So I was like, "Well, hey, let me try to join this." But it was saying something like, "Well, you live in the United States and like I had to live overseas." And I'm like, "Huh? What is this?" So I was like, "This look real strange." A lot of these houses is RealToken. This house is RealToken. I had spoke with one of the neighbors that live on this side of the street told me it's not boarded up in the back. They got to do better. Do some land contracts, do something. But they falling apart. This is one of my neighbor's houses. Her toilet upstairs is leaking. Due to this leak in the ceiling, it's causing damage around the foundation of the bathtub, which is very unsafe. She have children that live here. I'm kind of afraid to step over here, and you can see like the dipping in the sub, roof, and of the floor. I've been hearing about this for a while, but this is my first time actually seeing the bathroom. It makes me sad. But that's unacceptable.

The vision was really to allow anybody around the world to be able to purchase a part of real estate.

Well, the first tokenization, real tokenization platform for real estate is RealT.

I don't believe I'm bragging when I say that we created the industry. It's a fact.

Since 2019, RealT has offered shares to over 700 properties across nine states to global investors. 75% of those properties are in Detroit.

We see our beautiful tenant here who is the tenant for this house. Hi, how are you?

Hi, I'm fine.

Good. You're live on video with a group from all over the world.

Well, hello, world.

Five years of RealT. $13 million in rent distributed. 100 million in sales.

We have passed the 10,000 active token holders today, so.

The concept of ownership rights and access has been around for a long time, right? We have traditionally had things like REITs, right, Real Estate Investment Trusts, which is fractional ownership in real estate. What's new isn't that access to ownership rights as much as using blockchain as a digital ledger. Tokenization is where you have a digital representation of ownership rights to something of value. Let's say that you go to an event and you check your coat, and they give you a claim ticket. The claim ticket is not the coat. It's your right to claim the coat. It's the same concept with tokenization where we have a digital representation of our right to something of value. You can take ownership rights and divide them into smaller pieces, because I may not have $1 million to invest in property, but I might have $100. It makes it more accessible, more affordable. It also allows for transparency.

We obtained purchase agreements that show how RealT worked. RealT would list the property on its website in order to raise the money to buy it. Investors outside the United States could buy tokens for as little as $50, and that would represent a share of a limited liability company created to purchase that property. Token holders were supposed to make money from the rental income of the property, up to 16% back on their investment. But the website cautioned that the tokens were highly speculative in nature and involved a high degree of risk. The Jacobsons also got a cut. RealToken takes 10% of all of the money they collect from investors to buy this property. They take 2% yearly from the annual gross rental payment. And if they ever sell the property, they take 10% from that. Sylvain is a small time investor in RealToken. He has about $5,000 that he's put in so that hopefully if it went well, he could leave something for his kid. Jean-Marc and Remy Jacobson would hold these community calls in French and English to just update investors, right? Tell me about the community and how you would characterize the community of investors. What was your impression of the brothers through these calls? Have you ever personally visited any of the properties that you have invested in or even been to Detroit or the US?

No.

When did you first realize that something might be wrong? In 2025, a local reporter in Detroit wrote about how RealToken owed the city $2 million in property taxes and fines, and how some tenants couldn't get the company to do any repairs. The Jacobsons blamed these issues that came to light on local property managers saying that they had hired the wrong people. But at that point, the public opinion against them had already started to turn.

Guess where I am? You adults guessed it. I know, I am in Detroit. I've been here for quite a while now. And yes, I am taking a risk being in Detroit and showing my face here publicly, because as you know, we are some litigations going and we, Remy and I, had some threats.

In July of 2025, the city of Detroit sued RealToken and the Jacobsons, citing hundreds of code violations, including ones harmful to the health, safety, or welfare of the public. The Jacobsons filed to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that they were at fault, and that they in fact used their own money to fix issues with the homes.

Never a dull moment with RealT. Yesterday, the city of Detroit has decided to file a suit against RealToken for some blight violations.

RealToken sent one of their contractors out to install this hot water tank. They had started in December. In March, I came home and I smelled the gas. I was terrified. I was thinking about what if my house blow up? And then here it is, I have the electrical box here. I noticed water was getting in here because electricity popped upstairs and I came down. And I was just like, "Man, you got to be kidding me." I'm paying my money every month, and I cannot call someone to come do a simple repair. They would not come out. And this is an eviction letter. They wanted me to move out in May 9th of 2024.

RealToken wanted to evict Helen because she didn't have a lease. They said that they wanted to do repairs and sell the house. A judge ultimately ruled that RealToken didn't have good cause to evict Helen, but they kept sending notices.

Here's another eviction notice. May 1st, 2025, July 14th, 2025. It's stressful. It's horrible. And it's like, "Why are you trying to evict me?" I'm saying this in my head, like, you wouldn't want to live like this. I understand that, like, it's low income, but I'm a tenant that take care of your home and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.

The lawsuit in Detroit revolves around a lack of Certificate of Compliance, which is a local requirement saying that, in order to rent something out, you have to have it inspected by the city and needs to have a certain certificate. Tamara York-Cook works for the city's Law Department. She is one of the lead lawyers on the lawsuit against RealToken. She's been talking to tenants. She has been sending inspectors out to different properties, and she's sort of disentangled this web of 160 or more LLCs that RealToken used in the city of Detroit to purchase properties.

This is the first 400 odd properties. There's very few areas that have been truly spared. The priority one are the life safety issues. These are the no heat, no hot water, sewage water in the basement. You know, leaking ceiling. This affects all of Detroit, not just little pockets. I didn't know anything about RealToken until it was assigned to me, frankly. When I meet tenants and I see their living conditions, what goes through my head initially is outrage. And it's just so cruel. Why? It's not necessary. If you don't want to follow the basic rules of being a landlord, don't be a landlord. Go arrange flowers. Go be the Walmart greeter. Go do something else. I don't care that it's crypto. I don't care that you sold tokens. You could, I don't care how you got the properties. The question is, how are you maintaining them? How are you managing them? If we don't make them stop, they don't stop. They have no incentive to stop. I'm giving them incentive to stop. A big incentive to stop.

What did you feel when you learned about the way some people were living? The judge signed a temporary restraining order that said that RealToken couldn't collect any rent from its properties in Detroit or evict any tenants for 90 days. That essentially stopped the cash flow in RealToken's largest portfolio. But RealToken was still paying investors from properties outside of Detroit.

Every day we're continuing renovation in spite of the fact that there's no income at all.

How did the investor community react? The lawsuit with Detroit is not the Jacobson's first time in the American court system. By the early 2010s, they started to get into crypto and they founded a commercial Bitcoin mining company.

We became one of the first industrial miners in the US.

Around this time, we see federal lawsuits start to pop up, all involving different allegations of fraud. The Jacobsons sued a Bitcoin mine saying they were victims of its Ponzi scheme, a classic scam where new investor funds are used to pay out old investors' returns. The brothers were awarded over $6 million in court. In another case, a client of theirs sued the Jacobsons, saying that they had stolen $1.5 million in Bitcoin from her. The case was settled and the exact details of the deal are sealed. The Jacobsons did not admit any wrongdoing.

We've had some scandals or frauds with blockchain, and a lot of those are just good old-fashioned frauds. They don't really have a lot to do with the actual technology and how it works. Still, fundamentally, you have to do your research and do your due diligence, and make sure you understand what the transaction represents.

In 2020, RealToken expanded to Ohio, which grew to make up over 10% of its portfolio.

I have to say that I became very bullish on Cleveland. So please expect more property coming there in the near future.

RealT would put out data every week that showed how much they were paying to investors. It showed that there were nearly 90 properties in Ohio. So, I figured that would be a good place to start looking at public records. Looking at chain of custody, different local regulations, complaints from neighbors, requests to board them up. If you find them, you can kind of start to paint a picture of what's going on with these properties. Records show that there were eight properties that on paper were paying out investors, even though they may have been sitting vacant in the last few years. We found a property manager who used to oversee five of them for RealT, and confirmed that many of them sat empty. Good to meet you.

Yeah, nice to meet you. How are you?

Good. How are you doing?

Welcome to Cleveland.

Doug McVean has been a property manager for 20 years. He worked for RealToken until he was fired in 2024.

This property had a lot of needs early on, like the roof was leaking.

Was it like this when you left?

No.

No, not at all. There were people living here. None of this trash was here. When RealT purchased the property, there was a legacy tenant here. Somebody was already in place. And then she moved out in early 2023. After that, I was not able to make the repairs because I didn't have the money, and therefore I was not able to place a new tenant in here. And so it has sat vacant ever since. This one was the most needy of all the properties. It was very difficult to get new tenants in here because the building needed so much in the way of rehab. In a phone call with Remy Jacobson, he said that, you know, the money would be forthcoming. And we never received a penny.

So you spoke with Remy Jacobson yourself?

Yes.

He asked what the rehab would be needed to get it up and running. I said $50,000. His exact words were, "Well, that doesn't sound too bad."

Jacobson signed an affidavit saying that the property would be renovated throughout 2024 and that it wouldn't bring in any money. The city of Cleveland later boarded it up. How were you funding some of these rehab projects that you had to undertake?

Unfortunately, we had to do it with rental income. So it was a difficult situation for a property manager to be in because you have the needs of the tenants. But at the same time, RealToken, they're feeling a lot of pressure to pay their investors. So they were demanding more money from us. These are monthly statements that represent the final year that we were affiliated with RealT. 10617 Hathaway. And you'll see it was vacant at the time, so there's no income.

Right.

There was no rent collected.

So are there ones where there were tenants? Oh, here's one.

We're looking at Nila Crest.

Here you have the income, the revenue that's coming.

Yeah.

You know, you have vacant, vacant, vacant, vacant, couple names, vacancy, and you have a loss of nearly $5,000.

Yeah, 4,969, yes.

So here it says net total for January 2024, negative $8,816.

Yes.

Does that represent the net total for all 13 properties at that time?

All 13 properties. Yeah. There was a net loss of $8,800.

That's pretty significant.

Absolutely, yes. We went above and beyond, I think, in taking care of these properties. Unfortunately, they have decided to sue us.

RealToken accused Doug and his partner of stealing $400,000 in rent. He denied the allegations and filed to have the case dismissed.

Because of their financial needs, you know, the city of Detroit suing them, so they're in a cash crunch. And so this frivolous lawsuit was brought against us in the hopes that perhaps a jury would send something their way.

We were able to track down an investor who had actually bought tokens in these three properties that we visited. And he shared documents with us showing that while these properties were losing money in 2024, this investor made a return on his investment of between 10 and 15%. RealToken was paying this investor money that was coming purportedly from rental income of these vacant homes. Public records showed even more inconsistencies. We found 20 properties that RealToken didn't even own, but they still allowed people to invest in them and even paid out profits. We don't know where the money was coming from, and the Jacobsons did not respond to our questions about it. As of January of this year, over 2,700 investor wallets were getting paid from these tokens. One of those wallets belongs to Sylvain. He bought tokens for five of these properties, and he got payments for over a year and a half from them on a weekly basis.

The biggest challenge with tokenization is making sure that it represents the ownership rights that it says it does. Things like real estate, or transactions that involve real assets. You do often need intermediaries for that beginning stage to validate that the asset exists. Does the person who wants to sell something actually own it? Is it generating income? Where is that income coming from?

We're going to argue the RealTokens motion to dismiss the Jacobson brothers. This affects pretty much all of Detroit. Let's go.

All rise. Third Circuit Court of Michigan is now in session.

All right, you may be seated. Good afternoon to all of you.

The record for the court shows that at most high level ownership and corporate governance has been conducted by the Jacobsons.

Did your clients ever inspect the properties before they purchased them?

They had some people inspecting properties.

There's a requirement of due diligence.

Absolutely, Your Honor.

And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be buying a property without inspecting it.

Thank you.

Response?

Good afternoon, Your Honor. On the YouTube video, Remy Jacobson himself, and this is a quote, "I am looking for an apartment to rent in Detroit. He's here often. This is his project." Your Honor, we think that this is-

Videos how they come back to haunt us.

Your Honor, we believe that this court has the opportunity to maintain jurisdiction. Thank you.

Thank you. The Jacobson brothers lost their motion to dismiss, and I'm very happy about that.

In April, the city of Detroit and RealToken reached a deal. It gave a third party special fiduciary power to oversee the properties until they were in compliance. Around the same time, RealToken told investors that it would stop paying them. Nearly 500 French investors with a combined $34 million in RealToken have joined a collective criminal action against the Jacobsons. They plan to submit the case to the French Financial Crimes Division and hope to eventually refer it to the United States for prosecution. So now that the payments have stopped, what happens with your tokens? Your money is just stuck.

What do you hope is the outcome?

There's excitement, but we also have to remember there's work still to be done to make sure it is a transparent and fair process that people understand what they're getting into.

The people that own these tokens, they should have did their research before they made an investment. I think they may have to chop it up and just take it as a loss. Unfortunately, it's sad, but somebody should be held accountable.

The Jacobsons did not return our request for comment. In the course of our reporting, they took down all but two of their community calls from YouTube.

We believe in RealT, obviously, to the core of our being. There were some accidents and there were some bad things that happened. We tried to face it.