The hidden face of the king of rentals: luxury, 3,000 rooms and dozens of victims

BarcelonaAn orange Lamborghini arrives at full speed. It's dazzling and makes a deafening noise. It parks in front of you and a young guy gets out, with a slicked-back blonde quiff and well-developed biceps, wearing a Gucci polo shirt worth over 1,000 euros, an appearance he completes with a gold ring and a Rolex watch. You've been following him on social media for a while and admire the money he makes and how he spends it. The cars, the houses, the outfits, the jewelry. You envy his trips around the world. Colombia, Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, Japan. You've been taking his advice on investing, on being a winner, for a long time. What is success if not what he does? You even set aside some of your little money to enjoy the privilege of having him for a few hours all to yourself, so he can explain how he did it. He gets out of the car and calls you 'crack'. And, automatically, you feel like a crack. He fascinates you. He abducts you. He captivates you. He makes you fall in love.

He explains that he was born on October 2, 1999, in Irkutsk, one of the largest cities in Siberia, with a freezing winter and a sad life. You feel sorry for him when he says he had to emigrate to Valencia at only six months old, that he had several absent fathers and that his mother turned to alcohol and gambling. "They left me on the street, in an occupied building, a room without an elevator. If I could overcome this story, what's stopping you from achieving your goals?" he tells you in a motivational tone, and he motivates you. You feel represented when he says he's a self-made young man, when he recalls that he wasn't cut out for studies and didn't finish secondary school, that he had bad habits and stopped waking up late with a hangover to start waking up early to go to the gym. He tells you he wanted to create his own business and failed many times, but that he always did the thing of getting back up.

And, finally, he explains that he had a brilliant idea. That he started looking for apartments to divide them into many rooms. The formula was simple: rent, renovate, and house as many tenants as possible. He lists that he started with four apartments and now has 400. In Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia, but also in the Canary Islands, Mexico, Miami, and Italy. He calls himself the king of sub-letting, and you believe him and are dazzled by his empire. He's chosen, and he tells you that you can be too. His name is Miguel Krasnoruzhskikh Dvorkin, better known as Miguel Marzal.

A hidden face

At 19 years old, Marzal published the book "How to Retire Young and Rich", in which he already speaks of entrepreneurship, financial freedom and success. Marzal fills his social media and the interviews he gives with motivational phrases. There are no limits. Nor obstacles. You can go wherever you want. Success awaits you. "I will do what I have to do, for as long as I have to do it, until I achieve what I want to achieve," he repeats. These are messages that captivate many young people who sign up for his training. Pure fascination. A role model to imitate. But not everything shines in the empire of the king of rentals.

El ARA has gathered about sixty victims of his business model. About forty tenants report that the companies that are part of the group of companies linked to Marzal and his partners do not return their deposits, that the conditions of some apartments are unsanitary – some even have cockroaches – and that there are unjustified charges for utilities, veiled threats of eviction, and service interruptions for months. In one apartment, for example, they went three months without electricity, and in another, dirty water from a breakdown flooded all the rooms. This newspaper has verified irregular situations in at least 30 apartments in a dozen different cities linked to TACT Living, which has managed about 3,000 rooms.

The problems, however, do not end with the tenants. Some property owners, investors who lend money in exchange for high returns, and partners and former employees of the corporate structure also report problems with Marzal's management. "He thinks he's Llados [a youtuber who was sued for fraud]", summarizes a former collaborator. In fact, there are lawsuits in the courts from tenants and owners who feel scammed. Also from workers who were not paid or registered with Social Security. But there are also petitions and complaints to European bodies, the Catalan Consumer Agency, and various city councils, including Barcelona, which has initiated several sanctioning proceedings for sub-standard housing.

When asked by El ARA, Marzal denies that there are irregularities and bad faith to harm tenants, investors, and owners. At the same time, he defends himself by arguing that he cannot "control" everything that happens in each city and that, like any other young entrepreneur, he has made mistakes that he has been correcting over time.

The plot, a messianic chaos

The plot of Miguel Marzal was born in the year 2022. Or at least that's what is found in the Mercantile Registry. Four years ago, Marzal created one of the most important companies in the structure, which would give its name to the commercial brand that has spread throughout Spain: TATC Rent and Investments. 

Under the brand Te Alquilamos Tu Casa (TATC), Marzal has deployed a supposed successful model that generates income through different channels. According to various sources close to him, the main pillar is room rental, which involves managing apartments with many tenants, a business that generates high rents and is also facilitated by attracting loans from private investors. Internet users from all over Spain trust the model devised by this real estate influencer. "Good afternoon, investors! We bring a new investment opportunity," says a message recently disseminated by Marzal through a WhatsApp group with hundreds of investors where only he can write. He promises a 28% return in exchange for contributing 4,500 euros, and says he will put in the other half of the 9,000 euro investment. Within a few hours, a message with two large Xs announced that the deal had been closed. It's not a place for the hesitant.

But it's not all about rentals. Marzal also conducts in-person and virtual training sessions, which he calls mentoring or masterminds, depending on whether he teaches personal branding, financial intelligence, an indestructible business mindset, or the way to pay less taxes with a rental company. A weekend with him, in an intensive session, can cost 1,500 euros, according to people who have participated. Young and old attend, people starting in real estate and others who are already established. Beyond that, there is also room for small windfalls through the business of house flipping, that is, buying, renovating, and selling properties. Marzal leverages his more than 20,000 Instagram followers to promote this model, encouraging investment in flips through the company Flip&Go Real Estate.

The embryo of Marzal's empire was born in Valencia in 2021, and took its first steps hand in hand with his childhood friend Alejandro Rincón, who would become CEO and inseparable partner of the rental king. Rincón led the model in Catalonia, with companies like Future Plans 4 Business, but he also experienced a volcanic breakup with Marzal, from whom he separated due to disagreements with his way of doing things.

According to data extracted from the Mercantile Registry, at the end of 2022 Marzal created another company, Investments and Go 997, which would later pass into the hands of his mother: Eugenia Krasnoruzhskikh. She would later create Noinatra, the parent company of the entire scheme, which Marzal would later manage. In September 2025, this company absorbed the embryo of the scheme: TATC Rent and Investments. And this would lead to the current structure: a messianic leadership of Marzal, who does and undoes almost as he pleases.

Partners throughout Spain

Marzal's structure would not be understood without many partners who open doors for him in many cities in Spain and the world. The business relationship of the partners with Marzal is not public. How are his followers from Madrid, Valencia, and Malaga, with whom he often makes videos selling the wonders of his model, linked? "It's like a franchise, there are businesses and then a parent company. The different companies work under the same brand and he keeps a percentage of the income," explains a former employee to ARA.

Through private contracts, Marzal secures a percentage of the profits from the companies that partners promote for renting rooms. A figure that can reach 50% according to various testimonies. Another source of income is the monthly fees, in the form of royalties, to cover the parent company's labor costs, such as marketing, advertising, and events. "The partners are so focused on managing the companies and the apartments they have in each city that they are not aware of where their money is going. Some are suffocated," lament some former partners, who add that this causes the partner's business not to be profitable, which pushes them to manage the colivings to the limit.

Opaque internal management

Investors are one leg of the structure that basically hangs from him. Marzal promises them high returns, up to 35%, which makes it a juicy business, but at the same time not very "sustainable" for some partners who have worked for him. They add that Marzal places great importance on appearances –"His key is to maintain the fascination he generates"– and that is why he gets more and more indebted: "The ball is so big that he cannot go back," they say. A fact that the king of rentals denies, assuring that he "thinks" the business "long-term" so that "it is durable".

Currently, according to data extracted from the Registry, at the top of the structure would be Noinatra, the company started by his mother and which he now manages, and also Grosfera-Investments, which he created and which his mother manages. Each partner would have created their own company to operate under the TATC Living brand with a simple process: renting properties, renovating them to accommodate the maximum number of rooms and then looking for tenants. The most evident link to the existence of coordinated operations is that they all start operating with companies pre-established by Alberto Esmoris Llorca, owner of a business incubator. His business is to sell already created companies, a legal activity but regulated by the anti-money laundering law.

A worker who was in charge of speaking with tenants reveals that a good part of the payments they received were in cash. Also the money that investors lent him. To this cash flow would be added the deposits: as stated in some contracts to which this newspaper has had access, the deposit is not paid into the Institut Català del Sòl (Incasòl) unless the Institute itself claims it. Depositing the deposit in Incasòl is mandatory in Catalonia for any landlord of habitual rentals or for use other than housing.

Tenant without deposit

Anastasia and her partner moved into a TATC house in the Gràcia district of Barcelona in July 2024. For a month, they had no water or gas, and no one resolved their issues with the utilities. They were always given the runaround. The same happened when they complained about the "unhealthy" conditions of the property, where they had a cockroach infestation and where the cleaning did not comply with what had been agreed by contract. About a dozen people lived in that house on Ariosto street, and they all ended up fed up with the treatment received from Marzal's company. She, moreover, was not refunded her deposit and was owed close to 1,500 euros.

L'ARA has contacted about forty tenants who have found themselves in situations similar to those of this Ukrainian girl. Many fit the same profile: Argentinians, Chileans, Iranians, Italians, Poles, Indians..., mostly young people who come to Spain for a while and find themselves trapped in TATC's modus operandi. They have all lost small amounts, between 350 and 1,500 euros, a fact that deters them from reporting it. It happens with tenants, but also with investors, partners, and owners. Few take it to court. "Why doesn't she have legal problems? For the 4,000 euros she owes me, how much will a lawyer cost me? She plays with that. Then she doesn't answer you. Then she gives you evasions. Then she offers you a solution. And then silence again," describes a former partner.

Daria had problems throughout 2025 in an apartment in Barcelona's Eixample. "We couldn't use the appliances because the power went out," she recounts. Natàlia suffered it in Malaga: "It was inhuman, a disaster: the whole apartment was disgusting, dirty, there were cockroaches, with blood stuck to the floor, it was terrible. We endured two nights." Marzal's empire reached Mexico. Arantza rented a room in the capital of that country, and when she arrived, it was under construction. She was also not refunded her deposit.

An English boy enters a grand royal estate on Gran Vía in Barcelona. He stammers a few words in Spanish and feels more comfortable speaking in English, despite having been in Barcelona for a couple of years. He is an ideal tenant for TATC, the profile they are looking for. About fifteen more people live in the apartment, an ideal formula for extracting maximum profitability. He knows the company's reputation because a friend of his was not refunded his deposit money. He has already written off his money, but he accepts it with resignation. What he has not done, however, is pay the 396 euros they are demanding for utilities. Tenants receive a document with pending service payments, arguing that they have exceeded their spending on water, electricity, telephone... Some pay it, others don't. The company maintains that the contract includes 30 euros per month for services, and what is exceeded is eventually claimed from the tenants.

In April 2024, the Government approved an emergency decree-law to regulate seasonal and room rentals, to prevent them from being used to circumvent price limits in high-demand areas like Barcelona. A measure that fell apart after a few weeks because it did not have the necessary support in the Parliament of Catalonia. In this impasse, the company considered a solution: divide the maximum price by the square meters of each room and a proportional part of the common areas, and charge everything that was missing until reaching the amount that appeared in the contract according to the use of the services offered: electricity, gas, internet... More was paid for utilities than for rent.

Marzal does not deny the problems with the tenants, but he defends that they have served nearly 4,000 tenants in five years and that if "some deposits" have not been returned, it is because, in his opinion, it has been justified. And that many of the unsanitary problems can be caused by the tenants themselves: "This is not a hotel".

Complicated coexistence

There are also owners who report problems. Guillem has two apartments in Valencia and handed over the management to TATC in 2023. Four days after signing the contract, the tenants informed him that TATC workers had entered one of the apartments and were "taking furniture from the dining room" and had started "to carry out renovations" that had not been authorized. He endured it for a year, with constant setbacks, until in April 2024, almost two months before the period to terminate the agreement ended, he announced his intention to go their separate ways. From here on, everything escalated. According to his testimony, Marzal refused and urged the owner to go to court to resolve the conflict. If he wanted to get the keys back, he had to go to a judge or pay him 24,000 euros. Guillem reports that it was outright "extortion" and that, moreover, throughout this procedure Marzal "coerced" several tenants, as well as signing contracts as if the apartments were TATC's property and stealing "furniture and appliances".

The owners of the Barcelona Chess Club, on Julià Portet street, also experienced a nightmare. The financial problems of the entity led them to cede a part of the property where they are located, in the city center, for 20 years. TATC divided the apartment into nine rooms and four bathrooms. The workers who carried out the renovations damaged part of the historical material of the entity. "They urinated on the club's historical trophies from 80 years ago," recounts one of the board members, who initiated legal action and finally reached an agreement for 10,000 euros in compensation, to be paid in 48 installments, "for damages and losses". The Chess Club, after receiving several neighborhood complaints, sent a request to Marzal to provide them with the habitability certificate and the major works license that they had applied for the renovations, which were not minor. TATC disclaimed responsibility and argued that the permits with the City Council were the responsibility of the company that had carried out the works, which only requested an "asabentat" (notice) to carry out the entire remodeling of the approximately 250 m² of usable space in the landing –which was divided into two areas, one for the club and another for TATC's activity–. For two and a half years, the tenants lived in an apartment that did not have a habitability certificate, as it was not obtained until after the request was made.

The problem with the neighbors of the apartments managed by TATC is frequent. It happened on Julià Portet street, as well as in apartments on Roger de Flor street and Palou street, where the Mossos d'Esquadra have had to intervene to resolve episodes of poor coexistence with the tenants. A situation that is aggravated by TATC's lack of response when neighbors first report conflicts. In fact, the Barcelona City Council has opened five proceedings against the companies in the TATC network because it has detected that they have carried out works and divisions that have "resulted in the breach of the habitability conditions of the apartments".

Unfulfilled promises

Among those affected by Marzal's management are also several investors who saw an opportunity in the high returns he promised. "You see it on social media, you don't find anything suspicious and you end up taking the leap," explains an investor. He gave Marzal 15,000 euros to renovate an apartment in Zaragoza that he has never seen, not even in photos. He was supposed to receive a profit of 14%. In the second month, however, Marzal only paid him half and since then payments have been irregular, he states. Sometimes he pays and sometimes he doesn't. He still owes him 1,700 euros and none of the certified letters he has sent have yielded any results.

Another investor met Marzal at one of his training sessions. He was "captivated" and decided to lend him 50,000 euros with an interest rate of 15%. Marzal, according to the investor, was supposed to return the money in three years, but in the first year, he extended it to four without his consent. Then came a usual move in Marzal's structure: he passed the debt on to another collaborator of his who managed apartments in Barcelona. Again without the investor's consent, now another person was supposed to pay him. This new person has paid him for some months, but is also irregular in repaying the debt. They owe him more than 25,000 euros.

Money also doesn't always reach the workers, and some report that companies linked to the TATC brand owe them several months' pay. This also happens with the people responsible for cleaning and maintenance. There are even complaints about not registering them with Social Security and paying them off the books.

In this regard, Marzal assures that he owes not "a single euro" to investors, owners, or workers, and acknowledges that they had problems with workers that led to a "sanction" that has now been resolved. "I've learned my lesson and it hasn't happened again," he says.

Looking for a way out

A young man of Moroccan origin, who prefers to remain anonymous, leaves a building on Roger de Llúria street in Barcelona. It is midday on an ordinary day. He carries a document in his hand, which is the permanent contract he wants to show to a real estate agency to help him find an apartment. For now, he is another victim of TACT Living. He pays 800 euros for a double room with his partner. Every time he has to sign a paper related to the rental, the company name has changed, as if behind those walls there was an opaque machinery, always ready to change its skin to continue surviving. He wants to leave the apartment and has already informed the company, but the response is that they will not return his deposit. There are months when he pays inflated electricity and water bills. Restless, he says he lives with an increasingly suffocating feeling: “It's like being in a prison”.

While the young man looks for an apartment, overwhelmed by the housing problem that plagues Barcelona, Marzal shamelessly displays his lifestyle on social media. He doesn't hide. The business model he has created in just five years allows him to move millions of euros every year. Even so, in the Property Registry, he only has four properties registered in his name: two apartments in Castellón, one in Burjassot, and a fourth property in Sagunto. Where is the rest of the money?, ask those who have worked with him.