True story SAT scammer to real estate tycoon

Boston Condos for Sale and Apartments for Rent

True story SAT scammer to real estate tycoon

Like many entrepreneurs, Sam Eshaghoff got his start in business early. Instead of hawking candy on the playground, he sold good SAT scores to striving high school students on Long Island. That didn’t go well. 

At 19, his test-taking business unraveled in a high-profile scandal during which his arrest made national headlines and Eshaghoff was forced to withdraw from Emory University. 

Today, he gets his grades (oops, I mean paycheck) from square footage, lease deals and bank loans instead of multiple-choice questions. His development firm, West Egg Development, is completing its largest project, a 38-unit apartment building with 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space in Queens. The sleek grey, five-story building has floor-to-ceiling windows and occupies a corner lot in Bayside.

The road to this point wasn’t easy. After graduating from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in 2014, Eshaghoff couldn’t land his dream job as an investment banker. 

“I had a lot of trouble getting my first job because of the SAT situation,” he said. “Nobody wants to hire somebody who’s been in the news for that sort of stuff.”

His first break came from a Manhattan private equity firm that was starting a real estate division.

“I thought the whole scandal had a “two-edge sword” to it,” Arthur Bocchi, who hired Eshaghoff to help him launch the firm’s real estate arm, said. “He was obviously very intelligent to be able to take those tests and score so high. He also had some ingenuity and creativity, but it was being applied in the wrong way.”