The mystery bidder who walked off with one of America’s most famous mansions has a very famous name.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is the man behind the $130 million purchase of Casa Encantada in Los Angeles, the legendary Bel-Air estate that sold at a foreclosure auction in July, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A limited liability company linked to the 58-year-old venture capitalist placed the winning bid, according to the paper’s sources, keeping his name under wraps for roughly two months.
The setting was hardly fit for a trophy home. The sale played out outside of the city of Los Angeles at Pomona’s Civic Center Plaza, beside an unremarkable fountain, with an auctioneer in casual denim calling the bids.
Thiel had his eye on the property for months before the gavel fell, per the report. But don’t expect him to unpack. He views the hilltop spread as an investment and plans to spruce it up, a source told the Journal.
The deal ranks as the biggest home sale in Los Angeles this year, even though it landed far below the prices once floated for the place.
Casa Encantada first hit the market in 2019 for $225 million and returned in 2023 asking $250 million — making it the most expensive home in America at the time. After a series of chops, it was listed at $170 million as recently as February, The Post reported at the time.
Set on roughly 8.5 acres overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club, the 1930s mansion has seven bedrooms and about 40,000 square feet. It has twice smashed the record for the priciest private home sale in the US, fetching $12.4 million in 1980 and $94 million in 2000.
Hotel titan Conrad Hilton once owned the estate and nicknamed it “The House Where Dreams Come True.” It later went to billionaire David Murdock, who sold it to telecom mogul Gary Winnick in 2000.
Winnick, who built Global Crossing on a pitch to circle the globe with undersea fiber-optic cable, and his wife, Karen, spent more than two years and millions of dollars on a makeover led by architect Peter Marino.
Once billed as LA’s wealthiest man, Winnick died in 2023. His death exposed a fortune in far worse shape than outsiders knew, with the financier short on cash and buried in debt.
At the center of the mess was a 2020 loan from CIM Real Estate Credit, secured by the mansion, that swelled past $150 million. Karen and her son Alexander accused the lender of running a loan-to-own scheme that left her “effectively destitute,” and she maintained she didn’t grasp the terms.
CIM fired back in court papers, arguing that Karen personally signed a guaranty and later put her name on multiple amendments and advance requests tied to the loans. The lender rejected claims of fraud and financial elder abuse, casting the arrangement as a hard-nosed commercial deal between savvy players, and called the family’s allegations “fantastical.”
A foreclosure auction slated for December 2025 was frozen at the eleventh hour.
“At Karen Winnick’s request, the California Court of Appeal granted a temporary stay of the foreclosure on December 16, 2025,” a lawyer for Winnick told The Post in February.
The reprieve didn’t hold. By July, the auction went forward and the estate went to the highest bidder.
Casa Encantada now joins a globe-spanning Thiel portfolio that includes homes in Washington, DC, Miami, Buenos Aires, a Hawaii compound and property in New Zealand, where the German-born investor is a citizen.
Thiel, who was also Facebook’s first outside backer, moved his primary residence from California to Miami late last year.
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