The owner of an MLB team is accused of taking sand from a public beach in Malibu for a construction project at his posh home

• A neighbor has accused businessman Mark Attanasio of taking sand from a Malibu beach for a project.

• The neighbor claims in a lawsuit that marine life was exposed to “potentially dangerous” residues.

• The complaint states that there was “unauthorized construction work.”

The neighbor of business magnate and owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, Mark Attanasio, accuses him in a new lawsuit of using huge excavators to remove piles of sand from an upscale public beach in Malibu for a construction project.

Malibu homeowner James Kohlberg, son of the late founder of global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., alleges in the lawsuit that Attanasio's construction crew wreaked havoc on posh Broad Beach, exposed marine life there to “potentially dangerous” debris and restricted public access to “the entire” mile-long stretch of coastline.

“This case involves a private property owner using a public beach as his personal sandbox and disturbingly repurposing a public natural resource (that is, sand from Broad Beach) for the personal, private use of a nearby homeowner,” says the civil complaint filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Los Trancos Management Services, LLC is listed as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, and the Los Angeles Times reported that Kohlberg is behind the limited liability company that, according to property records, owns a sprawling Broad Beach home purchased in 2022 for $14.1 million.

The plaintiff's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Wednesday.

Kenneth Ehrlich, an attorney for Attanasio, co-founder of investment firm Crescent Capital Group, told BI in an email that his client's LLC, 2XMD — which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit — “has been 100% compliant with all of its permits.”

“Our offices have received the complaint and will vigorously defend our client's rights in this legal process,” Ehrlich said in the statement.

Attanasio's attorney added, “2XMD and its principals have owned property on this beach for decades and have been committed to restoring the beach and protecting natural resources. 2XMD is currently in the midst of a fully permitted emergency repair of the property to protect it from the forces of the ocean. The company has obtained all permits required for the repairs from the City of Malibu and Los Angeles County and has thoroughly vetted all contractors and subcontractors involved in the project.”

Land records list 2XMD as the owner of a five-bedroom, seven-bathroom home in Broad Beach purchased for $23 million in 2007 and a neighboring property purchased for $6.6 million in 2018.

Although Attanasio is not named as a defendant in the complaint, he is described as the “beneficial owner” of 2XMD and alleges that the defendants removed large amounts of sand from Broad Beach in recent weeks “so that one of the defendants could monopolize and retain it for his sole benefit.”

“In fact, the defendants operate massive dredges in intertidal zones of the ocean, sweeping up all the materials, oils and other pollutants that the dredges carry or emit. Such operations inevitably expose local marine life to potentially dangerous byproducts,” the lawsuit states.

It continues: “More specifically, Defendants are using these same dredges in intertidal zones to remove large quantities of sand from Broad Beach, a beach where there have long been concerns about sand depletion, and then disposing of it on one of Defendants' private properties.”

The complaint, which includes photos of dredging on the beach and accuses the defendants of violating the California Coastal Act, says the plaintiff videotaped the defendants' “repeated misdeeds.”

Attanasio's LLC applied for and received several permits related to repairing and strengthening the seawall on one of the Broad Beach properties it purchased in 2007, the lawsuit says.

However, the defendants “carried out unauthorized construction and development work on Broad Beach in connection with their construction projects,” the lawsuit states.

The Californian construction company JILK Heavy Construction is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Company representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The complaint also states that the plaintiff “suffered personal injury, including from sand removal adjacent to and in front of his own property and from contact with gasoline oil on the beach and in the water in front of the plaintiff's property.”

The plaintiff asks the court to order the defendants to return all the sand they took from Broad Beach, to make amends for any damages and to pay fines.

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