Hang around LA’s wealthier pockets long enough and you’ll discover there are several different sets of rich folks that live here. We’re not talking about differences in race, culture, age, whatever. We mean differing degrees of financial prowess, if you will. There’s about four different levels of “rich”.
There’s those folks who dress real snazzy and carry handbags and watches that cost more than everyone’s monthly salary but live in a semi-luxe rented apartment and drive a leased Mercedes C-class or BMW 3-series. We call them the phantom ballers. As in, they think they ballin’ but we ain’t see shit. Just sayin’. Then there are people who’ve lived in a nice house in a great area for a long time and have good jobs and are quietly accumulating savings. Old money types, perhaps? Third is those folks who make a million every year or who have access to millions and have a mansion in Bel Air and a nice place out in Malibu or Indian Wells or somewhere. Those are your run-of-the-mill baby ballers.
Finally, you’ve got your jet-setting, f*ck-em-all big bad bodacious billionaire ballers. The peeps who just live to shock you with how much money they can throw down on the strangest shit. Mostly, it’s people in this last category that we talk about on here. You know who they are in LA. David Kabiller. Lynda Weinman. Jho Low. The Resnicks. The Milkens. The Beverly Park crowd. And on and on.
Hungarian trillionaire György Gattyán and his (ex?)-wife Lubica (Luba) Murkova are most assuredly in the last group, too. These folks are no joke. They have serious coin. Unlimited coin. So much coin Yolanda doesn’t have the vocabulary to communicate it fully. Let’s just dive right into this insanity, shall we?
About 15 years ago, a young and handsome Hungarian fella founded a website that eventually became known as “LiveJasmin”. A word of caution: if you happen to be at work or in a public location at the moment, Yolanda would suggest you not google this site. Yolanda had never heard of it before researching Mr. Gattyan (we swear!) but we, ahem, came to a quick understanding after a few seconds of searching.
Not only is LiveJasmin one of the top three most popular “erotic” websites in the world, it’s probably the biggest one that charges viewers by using a pay-by-time model. Or maybe not, we’re not an expert on porn and sex and all this other stuff. No, seriously, we really aren’t. Listen, y’all. Yolanda may have a mouth like a sailor and talk about big boobies and booties all day long but when it comes down to it, we’re not into porn. At all. We don’t judge if that’s your thing. Go ahead and fire that ish up. We’ve even tried watching it once or twice but it’s just not Yolanda’s particular cup of…. well, you know.
ANYWAY. Sorry for that uncomfortable digression. Mr. Gattyán hit the jackpot with his porn website. But he didn’t rest on his attractive laurels. He quickly went on and founded Docler Holding, which is basically a holding firm for all the other companies he has founded or acquired. In addition to his still-hugely-profitable porno site, he’s got a film production firm, an IP-protection firm, a website hosting firm, an online payment solutions provider, and a hotel room booking firm.
Sometime in 2012, Mr. Gattyán – now a multi-billionaire and the richest man in Hungary – decided to move the headquarters of his rapidly-expanding business to Luxembourg (Europe HQ) and Los Angeles (attempt to enter the American market). He and his aforementioned lady love Lubica Murkova relocated to LA.
Upon his arrival here, what shocked Yolanda is that Mr. Gattyán and Ms. Murkova are mega-rich, attractive, and apparently not complete a-holes. That’s a nearly-extinct combo in LA! We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting these two but we know a couple people who have and both say they are extremely nice and friendly. Good job, you rich crazies!
SIDE NOTE: if you live in LA and you’re looking for a job, no matter what it is, you should really apply to Mr. Gattyán’s firm. Why? Because it’s pretty much the sexiest place you could ever work without entering the banking industry. Mr. Gattyán is a magnanimous billionaire and he’s spreading the wealth. For starters, Docler Holding’s massive LA offices are located in pretty much the most baller complex ever.
Not only does Mr. Gattyán visit the premises frequently (that means eye candy for you gurls and some of you boys), you’ve also got great pay, flexible hours, the ability to bring your dog to work (!!!), valet parking for everyone, showers in the bathrooms (!!!), and then a full-blown wet bar in the middle of the building. We kid you not. A bar at work, and you don’t have to be a server? Where the hell does Yolanda sign up for this shit? Mr. Gattyán, baby, call your gurl!
But we digress. Upon their arrival in LA, Mr. Gattyán and Ms. Murkova quickly leased a big mansion in a guard-gated Beverly Hills Post Office community known as “Beverly Ridge Estates”.
It’s worth noting that Mr. Gattyán is a bit of a self-promoter. Just a tad. He happily chats about being the richest Hungarian in the world and he loves modeling and showing off his attractive features. And he is attractive. He’s one of the sexiest billionaires we can recall, actually.
So here’s Mr. Gattyán taking a dip in his old leased Beverly Ridge pool. We’re not sure if this was approved as part of the rental agreement. But in any case, Yolanda ain’t complaining.
By summer 2013, Mr. Gattyán and Ms. Murkova and their family (they have at least one daughter together) were ready to buy. Records show they forked over a very A-list $24,000,000 for a rather revolting mansion in the (in)famous Beverly Park gated community. The house was sold by QVC fashion designer turned real estate developer Bruce Makowsky. And guess who Mr. Gattyán’s landlord in Beverly Ridge Estates was? Yep. Bruce Makowsky! Coincidence? We think not.
The Palladian or Neoclassical nightmare sits on 2+ acres in the swankier “North” section of Beverly Park, there’s 15,193 square feet of living space, a tennis court, a guest house (used as a gym), 7 beds, 10 baths, indoor and outdoor kitchens, wine cellar, and a theater. This house was built, as you probably remember, by comedian Martin Lawrence.
So for a few months Mr. Gattyán and Ms. Murkova lived in Beverly Park and everything was hunky-dory. Unfortunately, sometime in late 2013 or early 2014 the couple split up (we think). Listen, y’all, like we said we don’t personally know Mr. Gattyán or Ms. Murkova so we can’t say for sure when they split. We’re not even sure if they were officially married. They may even still be together. But Mr. Gattyán seems to have a new lady love (more on her in a moment) and Ms. Murkova is definitely no longer living in Beverly Park.
So anyway, Mr. Gattyán stayed in the Beverly Park mansion. Ms. Murkova decamped down to the Beverly Hills flats, where she is currently leasing a huge contemporary mansion designed by oft-maligned mega-mansion “starchitect” Richard Landry and located on a very good street in the western area of BH.
According to the listing, the early-90s-built Contemporary has 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms in a roomy but not massive 5,733 square feet of living space. This must’ve been before Landry decided to adapt the “Supersize Me” theme to his private residences. Property records reveal the house is owned by Elaine Joyce, an American actress of Hungarian ancestry (coincidence? maybe?). Ms. Joyce was married to Broadway actor Bobby Van until his death, and is now married to prodigiously-prolific playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon. Records show Ms. Murkova has been paying Ms. Joyce $29,000 per month to occupy the premises since late 2013.
Meanwhile, sometime in late 2014, Mr. Gattyán went house-shopping in Beverly Hills again. He finally found a big modern meets French Regency-style manor that he really liked. It sits on the far western edge of the Beverly Hills flats. Wanna guess who the seller was? Ready for this? Nile Niami. Homeboy’s like Beetlejuice!
Our Mr. Niami paid $11,000,000 for the rather down-on-her-heels lass in 2012 and gave the residence a thorough remodel and expansion. The property is one of only a handful in Beverly Hills that sit directly adjacent to the legendary Los Angeles Country Club. And apparently money was no object in this purchase, because Mr. Gattyán forked out a eyebrow-catapulting $28,000,000 for the crib in April 2015. In case you’re wondering, this is the most ever paid for a house in Beverly Hills south of Sunset Boulevard.
The big-but-not-mega estate captures 7 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms in 10,746 square feet of very white living space in the main house. There’s an ultra-sleek kitchen, a massive wet bar, a very modern starcase, and a petite guest house. The whole caboodle sits on 1 flat acre, an unusually-generous amount of land in the oft tightly-packed Flats neighborhood.
For what it’s worth, the house is literally only a 2-minute drive from the Landry mansion Ms. Murkova is currently leasing. That makes Yolanda think Mr. Gattyán might’ve purchased this house for her, but we’re not certain of that. What we do know is that the house is vacant at the moment. Wanna know why?
Because it’s getting yet another remodel! Yes, kids, this is what urber-rich people do. They pay top-dollar for a practically brand-spanking-new house that was just renovated top-to-bottom, and then they shell out thousands or even millions more to tear it apart again. It’s something that Yolanda will never understand, but that’s what it is.
But wait. That’s not all!
Within another year, Mr. Gattyán was back on the house hunt. Property records show that earlier this month (April 2016) he unexpectedly forked out an absolutely immodest $20,900,000 for another huge-ass Georgian-style house near the eastern border of the Beverly Hills flats, just a couple blocks from where the Sierra Towers apartment building and the Sunset Strip area are.
Though this spec-mansion sits on just .6 of an acre, the developer somehow managed to squeeze more than 18,000 square feet of space into the boxy behemoth. There’s 7 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, a huge theater, a wood-paneled library and wine cellar, and all the smart-home security features money can buy.
What the property does not seem to possess is much privacy – it’s built practically to the lot lines on the north and south side and sits pretty damn hard up on the street – especially for a $20 million house. Of course, Mr. Gattyán and his crew don’t seem to be too concerned about privacy, do they?
We have heard, kiddies, that the occupant of Mr. Gattyán’s latest house is a Hungarian model named Erika Turbucz. We’re not quite sure of the current relationship dynamics among Mr. Gattyán, Ms. Murkova, and Ms. Turbucz, who is married or dating who. We think Mr. Gattyán might be with Ms. Turbucz, but they seem to all be friends. Who knows. Maybe one of y’all can enlighten Yolanda, or not.
These three mansions alone have cost Mr. Gattyán a sanity-defying total $72,900,000. And that’s not including hundreds of thousands more for luxury rentals and renovations, too. See what we mean? This is major money. These three mansions, we might add, sport a total of nearly 44,000 square feet of living space. We have no idea why Mr. Gattyán, Ms. Murkova, an/or Ms. Turbucz want or need 44,000 square feet of living space, but apparently want or need it they do.
Just one last digression before we close this chapter (for now). Last year, Ms. Murkova filed a lawsuit against a concert promoter. Apparently she was all upset because she paid about $16,000 for tickets to the One Direction show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, yet her daughter didn’t get a chance to meet Mr. Styles backstage. That’s right, kids. Take a moment to think about that. Ms. Murkova dropped something like sixteen thousand bucks just to get her daughter a chance to meet Harry Styles for a minute or two.
Whaaaaaaaaaattttttt?!?! Oooh, Ms. Murkova!!! Babyguuuuuuuurrrrl!!! Don’t play Yolanda like that. Really wanna meet Mr. Styles? All your daughter has to do is walk right out of daddy’s house in Beverly Park, through the gates, turn the second corner and stroll down a little gated lane. We know, it’s scary ’cause a whole bunch of poors live around there. But that’s where Mr. Styles lives. It’s literally a 5-minute walk from Beverly Park. You ain’t gotta throw 16 grand away for that mess! Buy your Ecuadorian cleaning lady Guadalupe a new Honda Fit with that cash and everyone’s happy! How smart is Yolanda?
