The $6.8 Million Palm Springs Home That Was Designed as a Fortress for a Mob Family

Some homes have history. This one has secrets built into the walls.

The estate at 1255 East Via Estrella in Palm Springs just hit the market for $6.75 million. Three bedrooms, five bathrooms, 5,400 square feet. But the specs are almost beside the point. What makes this listing different is why it was built the way it was.

No windows facing the street. A 14-foot perimeter wall. A closed-circuit surveillance system installed before most people knew what one was. Jerome Factor did not build a showpiece. He built a place to hide.

The Man Behind the Walls

Jerome Factor was the son of John “Jake the Barber” Factor, one of Prohibition-era America’s most notorious con artists.

Jake ran stock scams in England that defrauded investors of nearly $8 million, rigged tables at Monte Carlo, and ran the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas on behalf of the Chicago mob. He was tied directly to Al Capone and Arnold Rothstein.

In 1933, Jerome himself was kidnapped off the streets of Chicago. Historians believe the kidnapping was staged by his own father to delay a Supreme Court extradition hearing. Jerome was a pawn in Jake’s legal con.

Jake was also the half-brother of Max Factor, the cosmetics mogul. The family name carried weight in places most people would rather not be recognized.

When Jerome built his own wealth as a venture capitalist, he chose Palm Springs. And he chose to build something the outside world simply could not see into.

A Fortress With Museum-Level Interiors

The home was completed in 1969, designed by architects Hank Webber and Don Staska. From the street, it is a blank white stucco wall. From inside, it is something else entirely.

Chicago designer Richard Himmel handled the interiors. Himmel was one of the most respected interior designers of his era, known for luxury residential work that aged well.

His original choices are still here: snakeskin wallpaper in a closet, a diner-style bar, silver-screened walls in one guest room, bronze-tinted floor-to-ceiling glass, a dramatic black granite fireplace.

The Factor family art collection, pop and op art accumulated over decades, lines the entrance gallery. The current owners are offering the furnishings and art separately.

That detail matters, because without Himmel’s pieces, this home tells a different story.

Indian Canyons Was Always Built for Privacy

The home sits in the Indian Canyons neighborhood of South Palm Springs, built in the 1960s on land owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Frank Sinatra bought his first desert home here in 1947. Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Walt Disney, Bob Hope. This was where the people who needed to be left alone came to be left alone.

Jerome Factor was not unusual in this neighborhood. He just built the most extreme version of what everyone here already wanted.

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This same pattern of high-profile names and complicated real estate outcomes keeps showing up.

Lindsey Vonn recently cut her Beverly Hills mansion price by $460,000 across two relistings, a reminder that even well-known sellers cannot outrun what the market is actually willing to pay.

Three Owners, One Mostly Untouched Interior

After Jerome died in the late 1990s at age 84, the family sold to Harold Kapelovitz, owner of the Desmond’s department store chain. In 2017, Jamie McFate, a longtime senior executive at Limited Brands (parent of Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works), bought it for approximately $2.2 million.

McFate and his partner Nick Bouchard renovated the pool and outdoor grounds but left the interiors largely intact. That restraint is the right call. Himmel’s work is the whole point.

According to Robb Report, the listing is held by Eric Lavey, global director at The Beverly Hills Estates, with the art and furnishings available for separate purchase. The home is now listed at $6.75 million, roughly 3x what McFate paid in 2017.

Why This Matters

Selling a $6.75 million home in Palm Springs right now is not simple. According to Redfin’s February 2026 data, Palm Springs home prices were down 4.4% compared to the prior year, with homes averaging 94 days on the market, up from 83 days the year before.

That pattern is playing out beyond Palm Springs too.

Nicholas Hoult spent 13 months and three price cuts trying to sell his Hollywood Hills home, eventually closing at a loss below his original purchase price. The market does not care about star power or storied history. It cares about pricing and timing.

But the Factor house is not competing on price per square foot. It is competing on something harder to replicate: original provenance, a documented design legacy, and a story no renovation can manufacture.

Properties with intact midcentury interiors by named designers are becoming genuinely rare. Most have been flipped, updated, or stripped. This one has not.

And then there is the backstory itself. Josh Brolin’s $5 million Atlanta estate is personally curated and deeply tied to a life chapter.

The Factor house is the same, except the chapter behind it involves the Chicago mob, a staged kidnapping, and a man who turned his father’s crimes into architecture.

A buyer at this price is not just buying a house. They are buying the last physical record of a man who built a fortress to outrun his own family history.

Key Takeaways

• The home is listed at $6.75 million at 1255 East Via Estrella, Palm Springs
• Built in 1969 for Jerome Factor, son of Chicago mob figure Jake the Barber, designed as a private fortress
• Jerome was himself kidnapped in 1933 in what historians believe was a staged scheme arranged by his own father
• Interiors by Richard Himmel remain largely intact, with the original Factor family art collection available for separate purchase
• Sold for $2.2 million in 2017, now listed at $6.75 million
• 3 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 5,400 sq ft, overlooking the Indian Canyons Golf Resort
• Listing held by Eric Lavey of The Beverly Hills Estates

Would the history make you want this home more, or would knowing what it was built to hide make it harder to settle into? Drop your take in the comments.

Wrapping Up

A home built to hide a family from its own history is now on the open market, asking anyone with $6.75 million and a taste for the layered and the complicated to come take a look.

The spec sheet is compelling. The backstory is unlike anything else on the market right now.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. All details are based on publicly available reports at the time of publication.