Controversial developers Sid Chakraverty and Vic Alston are suing a former tenant for libel after she posted videos to TikTok bashing her “horrifically bad experience” at the Soho Apartments in Soulard.
That libel suit against dental student Jamie Buchanczenko was filed in June, and two weeks ago Buchanczenko, who denies any wrongdoing, agreed to take down some of her videos while the matter works its way through the courts.
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The suit suggests that brothers Chakraverty and Alston are in no way chastened after their close call with federal prosecutors this year as they continue a streak of litigation that has ensnared employees and tenants alike.
The St. Louis developers behind Asprient, Citywide, Lux Living, and Big Sur Construction, the brothers (along with their accountant Shijing “Poppy” Cao) were indicted for fraud in September 2024, but prosecutors dropped those charges in August shortly after attorney Brad Bondi—brother to Attorney General Pam Bondi—entered an appearance in the case on the Chakraverty’s behalf.
Buchanczenko and her sister moved into the Soho building on 7th Street in June of last year, paying $2,343 a month. The building’s promotional material touts amenities like a pool, basketball court and bowling alley, as well as floor plans named Avicii and Swift—with “Kanye” being the most deluxe. Because aspects of the building were still under construction, Buchanczenko got two months free rent.
The brother developers says in their lawsuit that Buchanczenko tried to break the lease in April 2025. She bought a home the following month and officially moved out in June, without paying that month’s rent. (Buchanczenko denies the nonpayment.) Around that same time, in April, Buchanczenko began what Chakraverty and Alston’s suit terms a “smear campaign” via TikTok about their building.
Chakraverty and Alston are suing Buchanczenko and her sister for that month’s rent as well as interest and attorney’s fees. They’re also suing just Buchanczenko for libel, asking for damages in excess of $25,000 and that she take down the videos as well as “take all reasonable steps” to remove coverage of her post by RealSTLNews.
The attorney who filed the suit on the developers’ behalf, Daniel Batten, did not respond to a request for comment.
Jim McCarthy, a spokesman for Chakraverty and Alston, said in a statement that the developers are successful because they are bringing high-quality to a market that badly needs them. “St. Louisans can see for themselves the outstanding workmanship and architecture of their projects, like the new McKenzie apartment building they recently completed which drew high praise all across the real estate sector.”
McCarthy added, “But despite those accomplishments and the job growth and the economic boost they’ve delivered, Sid and Vic have been frequently disparaged by bad actors with ulterior motives, aiming to use developers as a punching bag. They even suffered irresponsible legal accusations from public officials that turned out to be factually wrong and unconstitutional too. So they are no longer going to sit still when their hard-won integrity is maligned in that way, especially from people with a hidden axe to grind or some ideological agenda….They stand proudly behind their work and they are going to stand tall for that track record, even when it means setting the record straight.”
The Buchanczenkos’ attorney, Elkin Kistner, sees the situation differently. “My clients and I believe that nobody on our side stated anything defamatory about Soho, Sid or Vic,” he tells SLM. “We think their lawsuit is an intimidation tactic.”
Kistner says in court filings that the sisters only signed the lease because of “misrepresentation and non-disclosures.” Specifically, the building’s management didn’t tell them anything about problems the building had faced since opening in 2022, including incidents of vandalism, burglary, missing amenities, and unannounced staff intrusions. The Buchanczenkos’ court filing also alleges a “bait-and-switch”: Before moving in, they were quoted one price and then were given a lease to sign with a higher amount. The leasing agent, when confronted with the discrepancy, said he’d made the change “under direct orders from upper management,” Buchanczenko’s counterclaim states.
The counterclaim goes on to say that the sisters complained to management of dirty common areas, thefts, noise and “partially assembled furnishings”—but received little to no response.
Buchanczenko began posting TikTok videos about her time at Soho this past April. The first one begins, “My lease ends at the end of June, but I’m trying to get out of it.…But since they won’t give that to me, I am going to just start exposing every single thing that I’ve seen here that’s made living here terrible.”
In a series of videos that followed, Buchanczenko claims the apartment building is noisy, its elevator broken, that her unit has mold, and that her packages were regularly stolen. She also complained in videos about animal feces in the hallways, management that would only fix things in exchange for positive online reviews, and a “man practicing his handgun aim in the workout room.” The videos were something of a departure for her account, which also included her renditions of viral dances as well as videos about her dental studies.
The videos did seem to be good for engagement. With a few exceptions, her videos tended to get in the low four digits. A pair of her videos talking smack on Soho got more than 100,000 views. The Soho video that did the fewest numbers still got 25,000 views.
The suit against Buchanczenko writes off her criticism of the building, claiming that her TikToks show her to be inconsiderate of the neighbor above her who uses a walker (the source of the noise), impatient (about the elevator) and failing to take into consideration St. Louis’ notoriously high humidity and potential for mold. The suit also says that some of Buchanczenko’s posts were misleading, for instance by posting photos of areas undergoing renovations as if they were the completed project. Soho claims that Buchanczenko’s motivation for the videos is her annoyance that she was not able to break her lease a month early. The suit also alleges that Buchanczenko was defaming the building as a way to make money; her TikTok account links to a “showcase” where people can buy products like a water bottle or chelated copper vitamins
A counterclaim filed by Buchanczenko asks that Soho pay damages to her, claiming that the suit against her was “an abuse of process” and an act of retaliation.
Says Kistner: “My clients don’t like being bullied around, and they feel like they’ve had a big, powerful developer group try to intimidate them, and they just don’t like it.”
Complaints about Soho specifically, and Chakraverty and Alston properties in general are not hard to come by, both in the pages of newspapers as well as on Reddit.
But the brothers have a history of taking a pugilistic tack. They’ve subpoenaed a tenant who spoke to reporters and sued former employers.
They also relatively recently retained the services of McCarthy, a high-profile PR boss who, according to a New York Magazine profile, is unusually combative. He has been described as a “one man Media Accountability Office” and has worked with the Trump administration to find ways to expose what he’s referred to as an “unholy collusion” between reporters and the government, as well as representing “big vape” and “big seafood” industries.
McCarthy tells SLM that “of course” Chakraverty and Alston would enlist the help of a media relations professional, given what they’ve been subjected to. He added that the brothers are now expanding their portfolios of projects throughout the Midwest, “with a focus on architectural excellence, market-leading amenities, and strategic site selection.”
McCarthy hasn’t been the only one telling the developers’ side of the story.
In the weeks prior to federal prosecutors in St. Louis dropping the charges, a pair of sympathetic pieces popped up in the far-right Gateway Pundit and RealClearPolicy.
The Pundit story took several shots at the prosecutor who handled the case against Chakraverty and Alston right up until its dismissal, Hal Goldsmith, slamming him as a “progressive prosecutor,” a “progressive crusader” and a man obsessed with racial justice at the expense of real justice. Alston and Chakraverty’s only crime, the article states, was trying to navigate the city’s Rube-Goldberg like DEI programs.
Goldsmith has long been St. Louis’ top prosecutor on political corruption cases, and has put quite a few Democrats, and Black Democrats at that, in prison.
Shortly before the Pundit story, a RealClearPolicy article called Goldsmith a “rogue prosecutor” and hit many of the same notes the Pundit would a week or so later, with its headline claiming he “clings to quotas as Trump and Bondi roll back DEI.”
Both stories cited the city’s reparations commission and the city’s deputy mayor for racial equity (which appears to not have existed since at least the Lyda Krewson days) as examples, alongside Goldsmith, of the city’s out-of-control wokeism that Chakraverty and Alston had become the victims of.
McCarthy says he fielded inquiries from those outlets and provided guidance, quotes, and background. “As it turned out of course, those commentary pieces you point out were prescient and got the argument exactly right.”
When the federal case against the brothers was dropped, McCarthy handled media inquiries, issuing a statement that said in part, “Even during the most difficult days of this process, Sid and Vic have continued with their hard-working vocation to build first-rate, affordable residential apartment buildings for the communities where they have lived and worked for years. That’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that we can all celebrate in the United States, the greatest country in the world.”
