The three-story house on 36th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, is hard to miss. The exterior walls are a pale yellow and the windows are trimmed in fire-engine red. Scrolls of metallic ocher leaves and vermilion flowers adorn the front gate. It looks like a rococo McDonald’s.
Inside, the design goes full Candy Land, from the fake pink tree and Skittles-colored chandeliers to the multicolored leather sofas off the kitchen.
The building would stick out anywhere, but especially in a neighborhood known for its red brick Tudors and walk-up apartments. And local curiosity has only grown since it landed on the market in July with an enormous $3 million price tag.
The seller, Jasmin Bokhari, and her husband, Rashidun Bokhari, are well known in Queens’s Bangladeshi community for their flamboyant lifestyle and sprawling real estate portfolio. According to public records, they bought the building in 1998, gutted it in 2017, then transformed it into “the most colorful home in Queens,” as per the listing.
But a peek inside reveals a darker story — one laced with fraud, betrayal and the shattered trust of a tight-knit immigrant community, where connections often go back generations.
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