UPDATE Oct. 10: Late Tuesday night, a volley of gunshots were fired at an Old Montreal building owned by Emile Benamor, and listed as the location of his law offices. Three men, aged 17, 19 and 20, were arrested a short time later in a white truck matching witness descriptions. A gun was found in the truck.
On Monday, Quebec’s chief coroner announced a public inquiry into the fire, which may be combined with the previously ordered inquiry into last year’s fire. A criminal investigation is also underway.
Late in the evening of October 3, a fire raged through a building in Old Montreal. At least two people are dead, and another is in critical condition in a Montreal hospital. The fire broke out in a building owned by the same landlord as an illegal, windowless Airbnb ghost hotel that killed seven people when it burned in 2023.
In a press briefing this afternoon, Montreal police indicated they are investigating the fire, which they have determined to be “suspicious.” The death toll has not yet been confirmed.
At least 20 units in the building at 400-402 Notre Dame Est, owned by Emile Benamor and advertised as a youth hostel, are or were available to rent on short-term rental platforms.
Last March, a fire in another of Benamor’s buildings that had been converted into an illegal Airbnb hotel killed seven people. That building lacked fire alarms and emergency exits. Some rooms were windowless, while windows were sealed shut in others.
In a strange twist, a woman identified as a guest at the short-term rental in initial reports by CTV and Noovo Info, Amanda Kozutsky, is known to this outlet. She has worked for Benamor on and off since at least late 2022, and was working for him at the time of last year’s fire. She helped him to manage his rental operations, and was interviewed by Ricochet and named in an article we published last April.
A video posted to social media by Kozutsky shows the fire in the downstairs restaurant while it appears it was in its somewhat early stages.
Kozutsky has not responded to requests for comment, and it is unclear why she withheld details of her relationship with the building’s owner when posting on social media and speaking to other journalists.
A history of problems
Martin Guilbault, a division chief with the Montreal fire department, told journalists that a 2023 inspection by the fire department found the building lacked an alarm system or working smoke detectors. He added that these issues were subsequently resolved, and the building was safe when inspected earlier this year.
However, numerous online reviews noted windowless rooms, and a German tourist interviewed by the CBC who narrowly escaped the blaze described his room as a windowless “shoebox.” Windowless rooms are illegal in rental accommodations for safety reasons.
“The building was compliant, according to our information,” Guillbault said, adding the fire department had no information to suggest there were windowless rooms in the building.

Guilbault did not clarify if the 2024 inspection was only of the restaurant on the ground floor, or also included the two story hostel above.
Provincial records accessed by Ricochet show a valid CITQ registration for a youth hostel at the address, although it remains to be determined if that licence covers all the units that were being rented, and whether the operation violates municipal bylaws or other laws (such as fire safety codes).
Benamor buildings have continued to host short-term rentals
Despite an outpouring of anger after details of the windowless, unsafe units in which seven people died were made public, Benamor has remained unrepentant. He loudly sued the city, accusing them of responsibility for the deaths, in a lawsuit that was partially rejected by a judge in August.
And he continued to allow illegal short-term rentals to operate in his buildings after the fire, with seemingly little concern for new provincial laws and municipal regulations enacted in an effort to curtail exactly this type of operation.
In October of last year, Ricochet booked and visited one of two illegal short-term rentals being operated out of a different building owned by Benamor. Our reporting also revealed that at least five different units in the building had been declared unsafe and ordered shut down by the fire department due to a lack of emergency exits.
That building is on the same street as the building that burned early this morning.
“The blame lies with the owner, who prioritizes profits over lives, and a government that doesn’t enforce regulations.”
Thorben Wieditz, executive director of Fairbnb Network Canada, called it “unfathomable” that this happened again.
“The blame lies with the owner, who prioritizes profits over lives, and a government that doesn’t enforce regulations,” he told Ricochet. “Ten months ago, the federal government announced a $50 million fund to help municipalities tackle ghost hotels. If that money had been distributed sooner, we might have been able to shut this death trap down already.
“Let’s hope we don’t see more tragedies like this in other cities across Canada and that the owner will be held to account.”
The Montreal Shuffle
As part of Ricochet’s investigation into illegal short-term rentals last year, we identified a new but widespread real estate scheme we dubbed the “Montreal Shuffle.”
It works like this: A landlord who wants to earn more from their property than they can get on the legal rental market partners with an “Airbnb entrepreneur.” That entrepreneur signs a lease for a wildly inflated rent, that the property owner could never get on the open market. The entrepreneur then operates the unit as an Airbnb, keeping the profits for themselves, but kicking back a significant portion to the property owner through the exaggerated rent.
If something goes wrong, like a tragic fire, this set up offers the property owner plausible deniability. They can claim they knew nothing of the short-term rental operation, and lay all the blame at the feet of the entrepreneur.
In our investigations, we uncovered multiple examples of the Montreal Shuffle. In which men like Benamor, or Aaron Drazin, scion of a generational real estate family that claims to own “millions of square feet” of real estate in North America, partner with entrepreneurs to boost their earnings.

The entrepreneur running the units in the building that burned last March was identified at the time by Ricochet as Tariq Hasan. The entrepreneur in the case we reported on last October was a real estate agent named Philip Misner.
Many details still remain unclear, including who operated this short-term rental “youth hostel,” or if this is an example of the Montreal Shuffle, or something else. Unlike the operation in the building that burned last year, this hostel did have a CITQ licence. However, short-term rentals are banned in many parts of Old Montreal. And we’ve seen a number of cases where CITQ numbers were issued to applicants whose operation violated bylaws. These are facts that will come to light in the days to come.
But there is one common thread: Emile Benamor, who it seems has not stopped hosting short-term rental operations in his buildings.
The Kozutsky connection
Ricochet first spoke to Amanda Kozutsky in the aftermath of the fire last March. We made contact with her in the days following the fire, having found her name and number on online ads advertising rentals in Benamor-owned buildings.
She initially cooperated, saying that she was unaware of the scale and questionable nature of Benamor’s operation, and telling us that she would no longer be working for him. On the basis of her insistence that she was unaware and naive, and her agreement to share details of Benamor’s operation with us, we agreed to withhold her name from our initial reporting.
But, as we worked on a follow up story the next month, we discovered that she was still working for Benamor, working to rent out units that had previously been short-term rentals. As a result, and with her declining to speak to us further, we identified her by name in an article last April that referenced ads she had posted.
In reports on the latest fire in CTV and Noovo Info, we were surprised to find her name. In posts to social media and interviews with journalists, Kozutsky identified herself as a guest staying in the rooming house, and is quoted as saying “All of the belongings I brought with me were destroyed tonight in the fire.”
In an instagram post, she shared video of what appears to be the beginning of the fire in a restaurant that was housed on the ground floor of the building. She can be heard saying “there’s a fire! There’s a fire! Guys, guys…”
Was Kozutsky a guest? If so, she should have a receipt for her stay. If not, what was she doing there? Does she still work for Benamor?
At times, Kozutsky has expressed anger with Benamor. At other times, she has defended him. It is unclear what her relationship currently is to him.
Phone calls, texts and direct messages on social media were not responded to by publication time. This article will be updated if we are able to reach her.
With files from Zachary Kamel