Four brothers gathered in silence in the Los Angeles courtroom to hear the jury’s verdict. The decision came after 20 years of legal maneuvering by the brothers — bitter decades filled with accusations of fraud, intimidation and betrayal.
At issue was whether two of the brothers had struck an oral agreement nearly 30 years ago. Such a contract would determine ownership of vast real estate holdings worth billions, one of the highest stakes ever seen in a Los Angeles civil courtroom. One brother swore the contract existed; another denied it ever happened.
What might have been an uplifting story of an immigrant who soared to the pinnacle of American wealth had devolved into a saga embroiling not just the siblings but their mother as well.
And now, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, jurors filed into the courtroom where they had heard the story of a young man who had left his family in India and improbably had made, and possibly lost, a fortune.
It had all started with an opalescent rock.
Shashikant Jogani had a $250 moonstone to sell.
Shashi, as he is known, was attending USC in the early 1970s, the only member of his family to immigrate to the United States from their hometown in the Gujarat state of India. His story and that of his family was recounted in interviews with Shashi, other family members and tens of thousands of pages of court documents.
The firstborn of five sons and three daughters, Shashi was their father’s favorite, a model student who, according to family members, always got what he wanted.
Shashi worked night shifts at the Alexandria Hotel downtown, making $1.60 an hour, enough to buy him a pizza and Coke every day and cover his split of the $60 rent for an apartment he shared with a roommate. He was working to pay back his father and others for the tuition money he had been lent to attend school in Los Angeles.
Shashikant Jogani, who came to the United States with little money, made a fortune in real estate.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
But a friend in India had sent him a small treasure: the moonstone. Send me back $250 and keep the profit, the friend said. Shashi went to the California Jewelry Mart and sold the gem for $550.
He had no idea this little sale would be the first in a long career of flipping assets that would turn him into a megamillionaire diamond dealer and real estate baron.
While Shashi was making his way in Los Angeles, one of his younger brothers, Haresh Jogani, was learning the diamond trade in India. Unlike Shashi, Haresh struggled in school and dropped out at 14 to work in a diamond-processing factory near his family’s home in Palanpur. He worked 14- to 16-hour days — unpaid, in order to learn the craft — shaping diamonds on a lathe.
Diamond traders gather in the main market in Surat, the hub of India’s diamond industry. Haresh Jogani began working at a diamond-processing factory in Surat when he was 14.
(Sam Panthaky / Getty Images)
An employee aligning natural diamonds at a factory in Surat, in western India.
(Sam Panthaky / Getty Images)
Haresh soon moved to the city of Surat to work in another diamond factory. He lived on the third floor of the factory, cutting 30 diamonds per day and sleeping on a bedsheet on the floor. He was still 14 when he began managing numerous employees in their 20s.
In a family photograph, Shashikant Jogani, left, appears next to his younger brother Haresh Jogani, along with Shashikant Jogani’s wife.
(Courtesy of Shashikant Jogani)
Haresh learned the trade quickly and at 15 decided to strike out on his own, descending into the hardscrabble diamond market on Dhanji Street in Mumbai in 1966. He bought and sold diamonds on the street, tucking cash into a secret pocket to keep his money safe.
Like his older brother, Haresh slowly developed his business into a behemoth and brought on the other three Jogani brothers, Rajesh, Shailesh and Chetan, according to the other brothers. He worked in Mumbai and Tel Aviv, dealing millions in diamonds.
Shashi woke up with a start on Jan. 17, 1994, to the shaking of the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake.
Rescue workers gather at the Northridge Meadows apartment complex, which was devastated by the Northridge earthquake on Jan. 17, 1994. The building was owned by Shashikant Jogani.
(Reed Saxon / Associated Press)
A man stares out at the street from his wall-less home at the ruined Northridge Meadows apartments in 1994.
(Los Angeles Times)
Experts would later conclude that one of his properties, the 164-unit Northridge Meadows complex, was situated atop the epicenter. The first floor of the three-story building…
Read More: Inside L.A.’s greatest family feud: Warring brothers. Billions at stake