Mohamed Hadih

Mohamed Hadih was born in 1948 in Nazareth

Hadid was born on November 6, 1948, in Nazareth, to a Palestinian Muslim family. His parents were Khairiah and Anwar Mohamed Hadid, and he has two brothers and five sisters. During the 1948 war the family fled to Lebanon and then settled in Damascus, where his father worked for the USIA and Voice of America.

The family lived in Damascus, Tunisia and Greece before moving to Washington, D.C., when he was 14. He graduated from Washington-Lee High School and then attended North Carolina State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds Jordanian and US citizenship.

He began by restoring and selling classic cars in Georgetown and later opened a nightclub on a Greek island. With the profits he developed real estate in the United States, including Ritz-Carlton hotels. In the late 1980s he faced at least 30 lawsuits from creditors and banks, and after a 1992 settlement he lost his home to foreclosure and left the Washington area.

He later built mansions in Los Angeles, including Le Belvedere and The Crescent Palace. A Bel Air mansion he built led to a lawsuit by a neighbor in 2015. In 2017 he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges over the construction and was sentenced to community service and fines.