What happened is that the original loan holder basically repossessed the property when no one coughed up the $200M that would have been necessary to repay the loan.
The loan holder was the estate of Herbalife founder, who died in like 2000 at age 44. Looks like Herbalife doesn’t work so good. The ubermenschen of the modern plutocracy are sometimes Bezos and Styer and Gates, but just as often they are the non-cognitive overbite having heirs of conmen, hustlers, or lucky strivers.
Some technicality that the loan holder had to front a bit of cash as part of the sale. Terms of the auction were basically that someone needed to bid more than to loan to get the property. Looks like they tried to do the sale quietly to avoid other bidders, because it’s probably worth a good deal more than $200m. Like the auction probably had to be announced in the local Pasadena paper.
This Medium post, from Kevin D. Williamson’s ex wife, is like an endless runner mobile game. You won’t make it to the end. The objective is to see how far you get. Please do not read this if you have a family history of schizophrenia or other predisposition to mental instability.