Beware of Real Estate "Influencers"

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Real estate crowdfunding guru Grant Cardone misled investors, lawsuit charges
Suit alleges Cardone Capital ignored the warnings from SEC lawyer

Real estate crowdfunding guru Grant Cardone is facing allegations that he’s misled thousands of investors across the country by falsely promising them annual returns of at least 15 percent and other incentives that never materialized.
Fresh off their acquisition of a waterfront Fort Lauderdale apartment complex, Cardone and his Aventura, Florida-based firm Cardone Capital were accused of violating federal securities laws in a suit filed in federal court in Los Angeles earlier this month. The lawsuit alleges they made false and misleading statements and omitted material facts in connection with public offerings for two Cardone Capital funds totalling $100 million.
The funds raised money from investors through crowdfunding, including $50 million between 2018 and 2019 that was used to purchase an interest in a 346-unit apartment complex in Delray Beach, the lawsuit states. Between last year and June 25, Cardone Capital raised another $50 million, and some of the proceeds were used to purchase the Port Royale Apartments, a 22-acre waterfront complex with a private marina along the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale.

Luis Pino, an Inglewood, California resident who invested $10,000 into both funds in September of last year, is the lead plaintiff in the complaint, which seeks class action status. Pino’s attorney Marc Seltzer declined comment.
Cardone, whose Instagram account boasts more than 3 million followers, is a real estate entrepreneur who has leveraged his large social media presence into recruiting small-time investors hungry to put their money into commercial real estate deals, mostly involving multifamily properties. Cardone is also set to star in the upcoming season of Discovery’s reality television show, “Undercover Billionaire.”

During his keynote appearance at The Real Deal’s annual Miami Showcase & Forum last year, Cardone said celebrity appeal was a key ingredient to his success. At the time, he boasted his firm bought more than $400 million worth of real estate in Florida, mostly apartment buildings between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. “Money follows glitter and noise and lights,” Cardone said. “You build a brand and you get attention…How do you sell anything? You get attention.”
In an emailed statement, Cardone Capital said it attempted to return Pino his $10,000 investment upon learning of his lawsuit. “He declined so clearly the investor and his counsel have a different agenda,” the statement reads, adding that Cardone created Cardone Capital to “level the playing field.”

“We have raised over $425 million and have one investor who presented himself to be a non-accredited investor, who invested the minimum five thousand dollars into two different funds and is now attempting to assert a class action lawsuit against us,” according to the statement.
The lawsuit alleges that a Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyer sent a letter to Cardone Capital on July 30, 2018, warning the firm to remove claims in one of its public offerings that investors would receive a monthly distribution that represented an approximately 15 percent annual return on investment. The SEC lawyer wrote that Cardone Capital did not appear to have a basis for promising such a return, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit claims Cardone Capital ignored the warnings and continued to peddle misleading information to investors.
Cardone uses his Instagram account to post photos and videos of himself living a luxurious, wealthy lifestyle, as well as pitching his crowdfunding business. The content is accompanied by captions proclaiming others can be just as rich as him by investing with Cardone Capital. For instance, the lawsuit cites an Instagram video post on Sept. 17, 2019 in which Cardone claimed a $220,000 investment would result in a $660,000 position in one of the funds and would allow investors to earn about $12,000 to $15,000 a year in distributions.

“In fact, this statement was materially false and misleading because there was no reasonable basis for this representation and investors’ distributions have, in fact, been much lower than these amounts,” the lawsuit alleges.
Cardone also acquired some of the properties with his own money and then subsequently flipped the real estate to the Cardone Capital funds. In some cases, Cardone provided mortgages to the funds for the purchases, charging a 6 percent interest rate. Those were paid with investor monies, the lawsuit alleges.
 

John Walkup

Talking Manhattan on UrbanDigs.com
“Money follows glitter and noise and lights,” Cardone said. “You build a brand and you get attention…How do you sell anything? You get attention.”
Lol this 100% true for beer and razors. But for investments, you want to buy from those with no attention and run away from those seeking attention.
 

John Walkup

Talking Manhattan on UrbanDigs.com
The less they sell, the better they are. The best ones don't have to sell a thing, they just simply introduce great product and let you imagine scarcity on your own. Brilliant.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Behind the biggest real estate crowdfunding implosion​

A chance to get a slice of Manhattan real estate turned into a bizarre ordeal for thousands of small-time investors

Johanna Trujillo invested $20,000 in what seemed like a sure thing — a piece of Manhattan real estate.
She and her mother bought into a co-working development with meditation rooms and views of Park Avenue South. That was the draw of Prodigy Network: It allowed regular people to make real estate investments that were usually accessible only to the rich and well connected.
Trujillo, 39, who moved to the U.S. from Colombia when she was 19, planned to use the proceeds to send her teenage son to college.

Instead, she has found herself part of an unfortunate club, a network of people all over the world who collectively invested an estimated $690 million in a company that no longer seems to exist.
Prodigy’s charismatic founder and CEO Rodrigo Niño — a Colombian businessman who became a pioneer in the niche world of crowdfunding for real estate developments — died of cancer in May, after the company had been struggling for more than a year. When investors call Prodigy’s New York office these days, no one picks up. Emails are ignored.

In December, Prodigy’s website shut down for more than a week, cutting off investors’ access to their financial records. What little information they get comes through word of mouth, a patchwork of WhatsApp groups, email threads and Google news alerts.
Where has their money gone? Investors say they don’t know. And many, like Trujillo, doubt they’ll see any of it again.

Still, some are not going quietly into the night. In the last 15 months, investors have filed more than a dozen lawsuits against Prodigy, several alleging fraud. It’s shaping up to be the biggest collapse the real estate crowdfunding industry has seen.
Prodigy is not simply another business shattered by the pandemic, or an investment that just didn’t work out. An investigation by The Real Deal shows that a history of misleading marketing, poor corporate governance and questionable investment strategies made the company vulnerable to implosion long before the coronavirus struck.

“I wish I could say it was a surprise,” said Ian Ippolito, an investor and commentator who writes about the real estate crowdfunding industry. “The things they said just never made sense. They never added up.”
With Niño gone, no one wants to lay claim to the messy remnants of his vision. Prodigy’s business partners include New York developer Shorewood Real Estate Group, which has tried to distance itself from Prodigy for the past year.

“The things they said never made sense. They never added up” — Ian Ippolito, crowdfunding investor and commentator
A lawyer for Shorewood’s CEO, S. Lawrence Davis, told The Real Deal that Shorewood’s involvement with Prodigy was “limited to providing acquisition and development management services and arranging financing,” adding that it “never solicited investors, never communicated with investors, and never made representations to investors.”

This year, Davis signed off on handing over three of Prodigy’s buildings to their respective lenders. Investors who bought stakes in the buildings were not told.
“Prodigy and Shorewood both have totally disappeared and have gone totally silent on thousands of investors from all around the world,” said one investor from Colombia who asked to remain anonymous. “They have absolutely ignored all responsibilities and all communication.”

The pitch​

Niño was among the first to start a real estate crowdfunding platform in America.
He had made a name for himself as a luxury real estate broker in Miami before moving to New York to sell condos at Trump Soho. In 2013, the then-44-year-old burst onto the fledgling crowdfunding scene with the energy of a Silicon Valley founder, in stark contrast to the establishment developers who dominated the city.

His audacious approach, underpinned by a TED Talk-ready message about “democratizing” real estate investment, quickly got the company noticed.
“They were running full-page ads in The Economist,” Ippolito said. “They came out very big.”
Niño and Davis had worked together years before on the William Beaver House, a gaudy condo in the Financial District that initially targeted Wall Street bankers with a campaign featuring a grinning beaver holding a martini. Niño was a sales agent at the building; Davis, then a little-known industry player who started out managing properties owned by his family, was on the development team.

The condo project fizzled. Plagued by money problems and litigation, it was eventually bailed out by CIM Group, which listed most of the apartments as rentals.
After Davis came on board as Prodigy’s development partner, around 2013, he and Niño set a plan in motion: They would buy commercial properties, redevelop them using funds raised from investors and operate them as co-working spaces and extended-stay hotels. (WeWork was just three years old at that point, and Niño believed co-working was going to transform the office market.) Prodigy would make money by taking fees on the investments and Shorewood would earn development fees.

Davis, who had a background in finance, worked with the lenders, while Niño focused on the investment side. Once the buildings were up and running, any profits from renting out rooms or selling co-working memberships would be paid to investors.

To run the hotels, Davis brought in Korman Communities, a family real estate company based in Pennsylvania. The three firms partnered up to buy three buildings that Korman would operate under its luxury hotel brand, AKA. (A spokesperson for Korman said it received standard property-management fees but never recouped its investment in any venture with Prodigy.)

At that time, New York City’s real estate market was on a high after recovering from the financial crisis, and the legalization of crowdfunding for real estate had opened the door for an exciting — though unproven — model.
People from across the globe signed up to invest, learning about Prodigy on the internet or from local real estate brokers hired to sell the idea on the ground. Some investors lived in countries with volatile economies and were looking for a stable place to park their cash. Others were impressed by Niño’s reputation as a successful entrepreneur.

Looking back, several said in interviews that they weren’t clear on the details of what they were signing up for. Prodigy’s jargon-heavy offering materials were printed only in English, and its corporate structure was a complex web of limited liability companies. But Prodigy’s projections were alluring. “This is one of the points that attracted me,” said an investor from Ecuador. “They offered good returns of 13 to 17 percent.”

The warning signs​

Many investors got little to nothing back. By 2019, Prodigy’s developments were deep in debt and struggling to meet their revenue projections. The firm had halted all payments to investors.
“I thought, OK, it’s just a bump in the road,” said Miguel Sánchez, an investor from Mexico.
But as things got worse, the company’s correspondence started to dry up.

Desperate to find others in the same boat, Sánchez started searching Facebook. “I really didn’t know what to do,” he said. “There was not a lot of information.”

Margarita Galán first heard about trouble at Prodigy through WhatsApp. Last spring, a message appeared on her phone with a link to an article about an ex-Prodigy employee suing the company and alleging financial problems. Galán, who since 2017 had been selling Prodigy investments as a contractor in Bogotá, Colombia, was taken aback.

Prodigy assured her that the case was a one-off from a disgruntled employee. But Galán was concerned. Over two years, she said she sold about $500,000 worth of Prodigy’s investments, including about $40,000 of her family’s savings and the $20,000 from Trujillo and her mother. Her last sale was only months before she got the text.
In the early days, Galán had met with Prodigy’s team in New York and toured the properties. She came home impressed. “You feel your money is going to stay safe,” she said. “You really think, ‘OK maybe this is a really good business. Why not?’”

Now, her clients wanted answers. They were frustrated and confused, but she had no information for them. She said she was just as blindsided as they were.

The vision​

One of Prodigy’s most ambitious plays was creating a co-working brand with a millennial-friendly vibe of consciousness meets capitalism.
“The Assemblage,” with its moss-covered walls, yoga studios and events where members shared ideas about mindfulness and psychedelics, was both a business model and an identity for Niño, who had been transformed by taking ayahuasca in Peru after he was diagnosed with cancer in 2011. (The experience inspired him to get into crowdfunding.)

On Prodigy’s website, the brand’s three Manhattan locations were showcased as glossy investment opportunities alongside three AKA hotels and two Chicago projects, which Korman and Davis were not part of and that have since stalled.
The portfolio gave Prodigy an air of prestige. But behind the scenes, the company’s management was sometimes disorganized, even sloppy, according to sources.

Sánchez, the investor from Mexico, said he became alarmed when confidential financial records belonging to another investor were mistakenly uploaded to his account on Prodigy’s online portal. Another time, he said, Prodigy sent a message to hundreds of investors with their email addresses visible to all.
There were other irregularities. Prodigy had no independent board of directors, something investors might expect from a fund managing hundreds of millions of dollars. And publishing its offering materials strictly in English went against best practice for funds that mainly targeted foreign investors, said Mike Piazza, a Los Angeles-based lawyer at McDermott, Will & Emery, which is not involved with Prodigy.
The tone at the company was largely set by Niño, who had a reputation as a brilliant salesman and a big thinker, but who could be mercurial and controlling, according to a source close to Prodigy. Niño insisted on overseeing every inch of Prodigy’s operations, and without barriers separating the different parts of the business — fundraising, managing investments and running a co-working brand — there were insufficient checks and balances to monitor spending and protect investors’ interests, the source said.
Watching from afar, several investors said they saw Prodigy evolving from a firm focused on investments to one consumed by the Assemblage brand and Niño’s deepening spiritual beliefs.
“I’m not criticizing any ideology, but then when he took a turn for a more spiritual approach … I thought, well, all right, this is going to not go well,” Sánchez said.
The Assemblage became so intertwined with Niño’s identity that in 2017 he organized an unusual deal: Prodigy would buy an upstate New York home from him and turn it into a 143-acre wellness retreat for Assemblage members.
Niño had acquired the property in 2016 for $1.25 million through an entity named Nino Family LLC. To buy it from him, Prodigy raised money through a quick mention in an offering document for an Assemblage building. The note said Prodigy would need no more than $5 million to purchase and redevelop the site. (It did not disclose the link to Niño but mentioned, in general terms, potential conflicts of interest.) Using the money raised, Prodigy bought the home for $1.45 million but abandoned plans for the retreat. Last year, as its plight worsened, it sold the property.
The last time investors heard from Niño was in a video message circulated in April. By that point, he had been receiving treatment for cancer for months; and though he had said in 2019 that he would resign as CEO, he was still running the company.
In the video, Niño was sitting in front of a framed image of a flock of orange butterflies. His face pale, he looked exhausted. He acknowledged that Prodigy was in deep trouble. It was “more than a business failing,” he said, “because I was the business.”
Still, he was adamant that Prodigy could be saved, and said he was still negotiating with lenders. He had few staff left, after laying off dozens the year before. The pandemic had not helped.
There was one final pitch. “If you cannot invest, I really understand,” he said. But, he added, “There is opportunity on the other side of fear.”
He died the next month.
“How did I find out?” the investor from Ecuador said. “I think it was over the Google alerts. … The only things I know about Prodigy are from the news.”
By June, all three Assemblage sites were closed. Though talks had been held with wealthy Mexican investor Moises Kalach about taking over the business, no deal was ever reached. (Kalach and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.)
Niño’s widow said in a November court filing that Prodigy had “no active employees beyond one bookkeeper” and planned to file for bankruptcy. She declined to comment for this article.

The avalanche​

In September, Katie Burghardt Kramer, a plain-talking litigator at New York firm DGW Kramer, filed four lawsuits against Prodigy, representing investors based in China.
Her cases are among at least 15 now working their way through state and federal courts, as angry investors try to claw back some of their money from the hollowed-out company. Even Prodigy’s accountant has sued, seeking about $275,000 in allegedly unpaid fees.
It’s shaping up to be the biggest collapse the real estate crowdfunding industry has seen.
Prodigy has ignored most of the suits, but not all of them, leaving Burghardt Kramer baffled. “I don’t understand what the logic is,” the lawyer said.” They’ve defended some of the cases. They haven’t appeared in other cases.”
Four other lawsuits, lodged by dozens of investors from various countries, accuse the company of multi-layered deception in its marketing of AKA Wall Street, AKA Tribeca and two Assemblage buildings.
Among the claims the investors make are that Prodigy’s investments were not generating the returns detailed in its offerings and that the company’s management took an undisclosed 16 percent commission from each investment. Cole Schotz, the law firm representing Prodigy’s joint-venture entity in two of these cases, did not return requests for comment.

Another group of investors filed suit over the same two Assemblage buildings, which are among the three properties taken over by lenders this year. The investors argued that by handing over the buildings without warning, Prodigy had violated an agreement it had signed with them — holders of around $250 million in investments — to consult them about any restructuring plans.
The investors’ lawyer claims Shorewood’s Davis was aware of that promise to investors. But Davis signed off on the transfers regardless, according to property records bearing his signature.
The source close to Prodigy claimed there was a “tremendous misalignment of interests” between Davis and the equity holders, noting that Davis was more concerned with the development side of the business. “They were playing a different game,” the source added.
As they look over the wreckage, investors are trying to figure out what rights they have — and whether they can get some money back.
In crowdfunding deals, information about who has the power to do what is usually outlined in offering materials, said Piazza, the L.A.-based lawyer. At a minimum, he said, investors have rights under state law to hold fund managers to their fiduciary duty.
“The question really is, by the time that comes to investors’ attention, is there anything left to fight for?” he said.
The point is not lost on the investors in court. “We’re not holding a tremendous amount of hope at this point,” said Herrick Feinstein lawyer William Fried, who is representing the group of investors, “because what is there to get?”
Investors in crowdfunding deals are generally quite exposed, because managers often have the right to sell investment buildings without getting approval first, said Thomas Kearns, a lawyer with Olshan Frome Wolosky who is not involved with Prodigy. “And if there’s not enough money to pay the investors off,” he added, “too bad.”
In lawsuits and in interviews, some investors claim Prodigy withheld information when it pitched them.
William Boulton, who lives in Venezuela, bought into AKA Wall Street in 2017. The next year, he said, a Prodigy salesperson approached him about reinvesting. Not long after Boulton did so, he said he was told the value of his investment had plummeted.
“All the people that worked at Prodigy should be put in jail,” he said. “They should not be allowed to work in financial services or the financial industry or [any business] related to real estate, ever.”
AKA Wall Street, a target of three legal complaints, closed permanently in August. The windows and doors of the hotel, built at the turn of the 20th century and featuring classical and English baroque architecture, are boarded up with black panels. The building was taken over by Vanbarton Group, one of Prodigy’s lenders, after a UCC foreclosure auction in November.
A recent visit revealed that homeless people had found shelter under the front archway. A makeshift camp was littered with pieces of cardboard, a styrofoam coffee cup and a discarded pair of winter gloves.

The fallout​

In interviews with TRD and letters to investors last year, Niño blamed some of Prodigy’s issues on the market, which can scorch even the boldest of ideas. Competition from WeWork and other co-working companies was immense, he said. The Assemblage, which to make any money required a huge number of people to sign up for pricey memberships, simply needed time to grow.
It’s impossible to know whether Niño truly believed The Assemblage could deliver windfalls for investors, but the source close to the company said “there were people around who probably should have known that they were highly unlikely to be able to achieve those results.”
Prodigy’s extended-stay hotels had different issues, Niño said, including competition from Airbnb. But one, AKA United Nations, did pay its investors back. (That was after a large institutional investor was brought into the mix in 2016.) A spokesperson for Korman, the manager of the property, said the firm hopes to re-open AKA United Nations and AKA Tribeca after the pandemic recedes.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does go after crowdfunding firms over misleading returns, depending on what was offered, said Piazza, who used to work for the SEC and now represents firms under investigation. Most of his clients don’t make specific claims about returns, he said, adding: “They’re very careful about that.”
In his April video, Niño said Prodigy never did anything “inappropriately.” (The SEC declined to comment.) “We may have overbuilt [the buildings] because we wanted to do something spectacular as effectively we did,” he said. “But in reality there was no mismanagement or anything like that at all.”
With Prodigy reduced to one employee, a bookkeeper, it is unclear whom an investigation would even target. “It’s a long time for a company of this size, or a smaller size, for nobody to be there,” said Burghardt Kramer, the lawyer representing Prodigy investors from China. “I would expect that there would have been a fiduciary appointed of some sort, either a bankruptcy trustee or receiver.”
For Prodigy investors living outside the U.S., many of whom don’t speak English, trying to get answers has been a dizzying exercise. How to find American lawyers? How to communicate with them? Pay them?
“I think it’s a huge challenge if you’re an overseas investor to understand how to access the U.S. legal system, to have some faith in the U.S. legal system, even just to figure out what are the right questions to ask,” Burghardt Kramer said.
Many of the investors’ old contacts, the people who might have originally pitched them, are long gone. “I looked them up on LinkedIn, I think, the people that I spoke with before from Prodigy,” Sánchez said. “And none of them worked for Prodigy anymore.”
Galán, the former salesperson in Colombia, has gotten out of real estate altogether. This year, she moved to her hometown, outside Bogotá, to help her aging father with the family automotive business. She said she’s still trying to do what she can for her investors, including Johanna Trujillo and her mother.
“I really feel a responsibility,” she said. “I’m here trying to keep in contact with them, to share information, to try to solve the [situation] in a really good way for all.”

The ground​

In June 2019, Trujillo flew to New York with her husband and baby daughter. Her teenage son lives in the city with his father and they had come to watch him graduate from high school.
After the ceremony, they went to Park Avenue South to see the building she and her mother had invested in. It had opened earlier that month, but looking up, Trujillo grew concerned.
“I texted my mom and I said, ‘Mom, the building is closed. I have no idea what’s going on.’”
Later that night, they went back to their hotel, Prodigy’s AKA Wall Street.
“The room we stayed in was nice,” Trujillo said. “It had a view and it was modern.”
Because of her connection to the company, the family had been given two free nights. It is the closest thing to a return on her investment she has ever received.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Bank forecloses on Prodigy’s AKA United Nations hotel building

Operator Korman Communities said in December it hoped to reopen site​

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has moved to foreclose on a Manhattan hotel building owned by Prodigy Network, a once-prominent crowdfunding firm that has been slowly collapsing for the past year.
In a complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court this week, the Toronto-based lender claimed that the hotel owner — an LLC tied to Prodigy — failed to make interest payments going back to last May, and did not pay the outstanding $81 million principal when the loan matured this January.

CIBC’s plan to foreclose on the building at 234 East 46th Street follows a sobering pattern for Prodigy. The company has lost three other properties to lenders in the past year, and is facing more than a dozen lawsuits from investors, some of whom accuse the company of fraud.
While commercial foreclosures have been banned during the pandemic, New York state’s moratorium prohibiting them lapses on Feb. 22.

Records show that Prodigy secured an $81 million refinanced loan for the building from CIBC in 2015. Lawrence Davis of Shorewood Real Estate Group, Prodigy’s New York development partner, signed the paperwork.
The building was operated as a hotel by Korman Communities under the firm’s luxury AKA brand. Known as AKA United Nations, the project is one of three AKA-branded hotels the firms partnered on, all of which were marketed to Prodigy’s investors. Lawrence Korman signed as a guarantor to the CIBC loan, records show.
But last May, as Prodigy’s legal and financial problems deepened, the crowdfunding firm defaulted on its interest payments, according to the complaint. The next month, it defaulted again, prompting CIBC to offer a forbearance agreement deferring payment until October. But in October, no payment was made. Prodigy’s default “continued thereafter, and continues to date,” the complaint said.

As of Jan. 25, Prodigy owes the outstanding principal amount of $81 million as well as at least $3.2 million in accrued interest, the bank claims.
Representatives for Prodigy could not be reached for comment. Davis and Korman did not respond to requests for comment. CIBC declined to comment.

Founded in 2013 by former luxury broker Rodrigo Niño, Prodigy Network raised an estimated $690 million from investors around the world for developments in New York and Chicago. However, as an investigation by The Real Deal shows, the company’s history of misleading marketing, poor corporate governance and questionable investment strategies set in motion a collapse that has been playing out for some time.

Early last year, the company called on investors to cough up $40 million to save two struggling Prodigy buildings, warning them that they risked losing their money in full. Many investors, at that point, had not heard from the company in months.
In May, Niño died of cancer, leaving the company without a CEO. In a recent court filing, his widow said Prodigy was insolvent and had only one employee, a bookkeeper.
Prodigy’s collapse has made it even more difficult for investors to get answers and accountability, a process complicated by the fact that a large number are based overseas. Of the more than a dozen lawsuits filed, Prodigy has responded to only a select few.

“All the people that worked at Prodigy should be put in jail,” William Boulton, an investor in Venezuela, told TRD last year. “They should not be allowed to work in financial services or the financial industry or [any business] related to real estate, ever.”
UPDATE: This piece has been updated to reflect the date the commercial foreclosure ban expires. It is Feb. 22.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Vanbarton forecloses on Prodigy’s FiDi co-working property​

Crowdfunding platform loses another building as it goes through bankruptcy​


 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Bravo pausing “Million Dollar Listing NY” after 9 seasons
The drama and deal-filled run of “Million Dollar Listing New York” has come to an end after nine seasons.

Variety first reported the development for the Bravo series, citing unnamed sources. When reached for comment, the network said only that it was “on pause,” but declined to elaborate.

Bravo favors designating shows as “on pause” instead of “canceled,” due to the network’s tendency to re-launch its franchises after years off the air, as noted by Variety.

Cast members were previously notified there are no plans for a new season of the Emmy-nominated show. The series, which followed a handful of Manhattan-based brokers as they navigated the business, was known for launching small-time players into the upper echelons of the industry.

Cast member Tyler Whitman said he never would have reached $250 million in sales last year if not for the exposure he got on the series.

“I was a no-namer, up and coming, working for a small brand that nobody had heard of,” said Whitman, who has worked as a full-time broker with TripleMint since 2016.

The show had difficulties in recent years working around pandemic restrictions, which Whitman said prevented the series from filming signature scenes, like big parties.

“We couldn’t do what makes the show fun,” he said. “Honestly, it was so hard working around Covid unless we can get back to the fun way to do it, it didn’t make sense for the cast members.”

The first woman to join the New York cast, Kirsten Jordan, had mixed feelings about its ending.

“It’s bittersweet to close a chapter and get started writing the next one, but looking back on season 9 I truly couldn’t be prouder of the stories I told,” she said in a statement. “The world needs to see more working moms thriving in their careers and in motherhood.”

The decision to cancel the show comes six months after Fredrik Eklund, one of Douglas Elliman’s most successful brokers, said he wouldn’t be returning.

Eklund said at the time the show gave his once small sales team “superpowers” and helped transform it into the nation’s “largest and most prolific team.” Eklund, who was the first cast member to appear on the show and its spinoff Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, said his team last year brought in $4.5 billion in sales.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Scammer posing as real estate developer sentenced for laundering​

Ramon Abbas will serve 11 years for multimillion-dollar hustle​

Ramon Abbas isn’t a real estate developer, but he played one on Instagram.
He flaunted a lavish lifestyle with private jets, luxury cars, gourmet meals and opulent international trips. But the Nigerian man popularly known as Ray Hushpuppi on social media was really a prolific money launderer who swindled millions of dollars from companies in the U.S. and abroad, according to CNN.
Abbas was sentenced in federal court last week to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution to two victims.
All told, he and co-conspirators stole or conspired to launder more than $300 million through various fraudulent online activities, the Department of Justice said.
In one case, Abbas and Ghaleb Alaumary induced a paralegal at an unnamed New York law firm to wire more than $900,000, which was meant for a client’s real estate refinancing, to a bank account controlled by the fraudsters.

In 2019, he helped launder $14.7 million stolen by North Korean hackers from a bank in Malta, funneling the money through banks in Romania and Bulgaria. Other victims include a U.K.-based soccer club and a person who was trying to build a school in Qatar, officials said.
Until his June 2020 arrest, Abbas had quite a ride — in some cases literally — with his ill-gotten gains.
In addition to photos of him with various sports stars and celebrities, Abbas’ posts included pictures of him posing with Bentleys, Rolls Royces and Ferraris, with the hashtag #AllMine.
“Started out my day having sushi down at Nobu in Monte Carlo, Monaco, then decided to book a helicopter to have … facials at the Christian Dior spa in Paris then ended my day having champagne in Gucci,” Abbas wrote in a caption on his now-defunct Instagram account, CNN reported.

But Abbas’ active social media presence, which had millions of followers, also helped bring him down, as officials linked the email address and phone number he used to register his Instagram account to transactions he was believed to have made with his co-conspirators.
His posts were also useful. Investigators, for example, verified his birthday by matching the one he listed on a U.S. visa application with the date of a post of a birthday cake that was topped with a Fendi logo.
Abbas, 40, was arrested by United Arab Emirates authorities at a Dubai resort in June 2020. He was subsequently turned over to the FBI, who charged him with conspiracy to commit money laundering.
At the time of his arrest, authorities seized more than $40 million, as well as 13 luxury cars worth nearly $7 million and email addresses of millions of potential victims.

Prior to his sentencing, Abbas struck a different tone than the flamboyance on display during his spree. In a letter to United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, he expressed regret for “letting greed ruin the good name of my family, my blessing and my name.”
 

David Goldsmith

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DOJ and SEC charge social media influencers in alleged $100 million stock pump-and-dump scheme​

KEY POINTS
  • Federal prosecutors and the SEC charged eight social media influencers in an alleged conspiracy in which Twitter and Discord were used to commit securities fraud.
  • The separate criminal and civil complaints allege the defendants illicitly made more than $100 million.
  • The scheme involved hyping interest in certain securities in order to raise the value and later selling shares at the artificially inflated prices, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday charged seven social media influencers with using Twitter and Discord to commit securities fraud that netted them more than $100 million in illicit gains.
An eighth influencer was charged with aiding and abetting the alleged scheme in the SEC's civil complaint and with conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the Department of Justice's criminal case.

The seven charged with securities fraud were also charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud by the DOJ. Authorities alleged the defendants used the social media platforms to manipulate exchange-traded stocks in a scheme going back to at least January 2020. Through widely followed Twitter accounts and stock trading chatrooms on Discord, these defendants allegedly "promoted themselves as successful traders," according to an SEC press release, and encouraged followers to buy stocks that they also purchased.
But they did not disclose to their followers while promoting those stocks that they planned to sell shares once prices or trading volumes rose, the DOJ and SEC alleged. The influencers gained a profit by pumping the stock prices and then selling once they rose, earning about $100 million in total.
infographic

Department of Justice chart detailing defendants in alleged pump and dump scam.
Department of Justice
Each of the defendants had well over 100,000 Twitter followers as of this month, the SEC complaint said. One of those accounts, @PJ_Matlock — which is run by Texas resident Perry Matlock, who calls himself the CEO of Atlas Trading — no longer exists as of Wednesday. The other primary defendants accused of securities fraud, and their Twitter handles, are Edward Constantinescu aka Edward Constantin (@MrZackMorris), Thomas Cooperman (@ohheytommy), Gary Deel (@notoriousalerts), Mitchell Hennessey (@Hugh_Henne), Stefan Hrvatin (@LadeBackk) and John Rybarcyzk (@Ultra_Calls).
Daniel Knight (@DipDeity) was charged by the SEC with aiding and abetting, and by the DOJ with conspiracy, in the alleged scheme, in part by co-hosting a podcast that promoted some of the primary defendants as expert traders. Authorities alleged Knight also traded with the other defendants and saw profits from the scheme.
Some of the defendants' Twitter bios include disclaimers at least as of Wednesday that appear to try to mitigate their legal risks. For example, Constantinescu's account says, "All my tweets are just my opinions. I'm still not a financial advisor. Parody account." Hennessey's says, "Everything is my opinion.I actively trade positions.Not a pro,Not Financial Advice,probably do the opposite." Rybarcyzk's reads "DISCLAIMER: My tweets are NOT recommendations to enter a stock. - Ideas shared on Twitter are NOT buy or sell signals. DO NOT TRADE BASED ON SOCIAL MEDIA."
Knight's bio says, "don't buy/sell off my tweets EVER."
The criminal complaint and civil lawsuit both were filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Twitter and Discord did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Three of the influencers charged in the scheme who had open direct messages on Twitter — Deel, Rybarcyzk and Knight — did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment. Messages sent to Instagram accounts that appear to be linked to Matlock, Constantinescu and Cooperman were not immediately answered. A message to a LinkedIn account appearing to be linked to Hennessey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Contact information for Hrvatin could not immediately be found.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Nate Paul, close associate of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, faces eight felony counts​

By Ed Lavandera and Josh Campbell, CNN
Updated 4:34 PM EDT, Fri June 9, 2023

Nate Paul faces eight felony counts in an indictment unsealed Friday.

World Class Real Estate
Nate Paul faces eight felony counts in an indictment unsealed Friday.
CNN —
Nate Paul, a real estate investor and close associate of impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been charged with eight felony counts of financial crimes.
The 23-page federal indictment accuses Paul of making false statements to mortgage lenders and credit unions to secure business loans. The court filing indicates the alleged financial crimes occurred in 2017 and 2018.
His relationship with Paxton is a key focus of impeachment articles brought against the embattled attorney general last month, CNN has reported.

Paul’s attorney, Gerry Morris, declined to comment on the charges to CNN.
Paxton, who is also facing an FBI investigation, is not named in the indictment unsealed Friday morning.
“The charges against Paul evidently have nothing to do with Attorney General Ken Paxton. Nothing whatsoever. That should speak volumes as to how weak this impeachment effort is,” said Tony Buzbee, who is representing Paxton in the impeachment.
However, another of Paxton’s attorneys, Dan Cogdell, told the Dallas Morning News the criminal charges filed against Paul could be part of a strategy to get the real estate developer at the center of the impeachment case against Paxton to testify against the attorney general.
“You don’t have to be Nostradamus to assume that they’re going to try to flip Nate Paul to testify against Ken [Paxton]. I don’t know that for a fact. But I’d be very surprised if that wasn’t the case,” Cogdell told the newspaper.
Paul faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million for each felony count filed in the indictment, according to federal prosecutors.
Paul was released on bond after making an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Austin, Texas Friday morning. The judge ordered Paul to surrender his passport and was told he could travel freely in Texas but must notify the court if he wants to leave the state.
When reached for comment, the FBI deferred to the US Attorney’s office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The state House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton after a legislative probe unraveled an alleged yearslong pattern of corruption, including abusing his office’s powers, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstructing justice.
The probe followed Paxton’s effort to settle a lawsuit with four former employees of the attorney general’s office after the whistleblowers accused Paxton of using his authority to benefit Paul, who had donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican’s reelection campaign.

Several of the impeachment articles spotlight Paxton’s relationship with Paul, including an accusation Paxton used attorney general’s office employees to write a legal opinion intended to help Paul avoid the foreclosure sale of properties owned by Paul and his businesses.
Both men have previously denied wrongdoing.
As Paxton awaits a state Senate impeachment trial, he is temporarily suspended from his duties.
Following the House vote to impeach the attorney general, Paxton called the move a “politically motivated sham.”
 

David Goldsmith

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NJ real estate influencers accused in $2M apartment scam
Investors claim the couple disappeared with money after pitching 50-unit project

Two New Jersey real estate influencers and a prominent radio DJ have been accused of taking a $1.5 million investment for an apartment project that never materialized.
Anthony Barone and Anthony Martini filed a lawsuit last week in New Jersey Supreme Court regarding the alleged fraud, NorthJersey.com reported. The pair are seeking compensatory, consequential and punitive damages.

Barone and Martini are accusing Cesar and Jennifer Pina, who post real estate projects and commentary on social media, of taking off with their combined investment for projects including the 50-unit Taylor Apartments slated for Main Street in Paterson.
In 2018, Barone heard DJ Envy of Power 105.1 talking about his partnership with the Pinas, a partnership on full display on Cesar Pina’s website. The partnership saw DJ Envy buy undervalued Paterson homes and flip or rent them, according to the lawsuit.

DJ Envy and the Pinas specifically pitched the pair of investors on the Taylor Apartments the following year, the investors claim. According to the lawsuit, Martini soon received a formation certificate and stock purchase agreement to buy 25 percent of the project, leaving the rest to Jennifer.
Martini’s investment was earmarked for cost overruns and early operating expenses, according to the lawsuit. The Pinas are alleged to have claimed the project was funded with $2.5 million from Jennifer and $3.5 million in construction financing to cover the entire construction cost.

Barone soon bought in as well, investing $500,000 for a 12.5 percent stake, half of Martini’s investment and stake, according to the lawsuit.
After forging Martini’s signature to confirm the addition, the Pinas then started giving the investors the runaround regarding construction progress, according to the suit, blaming factors such as the pandemic. So far, the only progress made was the pouring of the foundation, the investors say.

Martini began demanding his money back, while Barone claims he was lured to another venture with the Pinas involving fractional ownership, into which the lawsuit says he invested $300,000.
Social media posts tipped Barone off to allegations that DJ Envy and the Pinas were running a Ponzi scheme. Neither investor has been paid back by the Pinas, who have an existing social media profile with content related to past flipping projects.
 

David Goldsmith

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Staff member

Philadelphia real estate influencer accused of fraud and deceit​

Greg Parker, aka “Big Bizzneesss” sold a dream that investors say has been a nightmare
In the world of social media, real estate influencers Greg Parker Jr., known by his online persona Big Bizzneesss, and his wife, Danielle “Nikki” Morris Parker, seemed to offer a dream come true for thousands of young investors looking to break into the real estate market.
With their lavish lifestyle showcased against backdrops of private planes, luxury cars, and a multimillion-dollar mansion, the Parkers shared their rags-to-riches story of building a real estate empire in North Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

They promised to empower their Instagram followers to replicate their success. However, allegations of fraud and deceit are now threatening to unravel their empire.
The Parkers enticed their 285,000 Instagram followers with investment seminars promising to unveil the secrets of profiting from distressed real estate markets. The entry fee for these seminars ranged from $97 to $297, with additional upsells, including one-on-one mentorship and opportunities to invest in hand-picked properties at supposedly “rock bottom” prices.

They cultivated a sense of urgency, urging participants not to miss out on lucrative opportunities.
Many investors were drawn in, including Benjamin Nelson, an undergraduate at Drexel University at the time. After attending seminars and making a short-term investment, Nelson trusted the Parkers with $20,000 for a property purchase.
However, the sale never materialized, and his attempts to contact them were met with silence.
“I keep getting the runaround. I just want to know what’s going on,” Nelson texted Parker last year, according to the outlet. “Playing with someone’s hard earned money is one of the worst things you can do.”
Similar stories began emerging as more aspiring investors filed federal lawsuits against the Parkers under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.

These lawsuits allege that the couple, along with their web of companies, defrauded clients by promising mentorship and property sales that never happened or involved properties with significant issues.
Two of the RICO lawsuits have been settled, but a bankruptcy filing by Danielle Parker’s company put two more settlements on hold. The Cleveland FBI office could neither confirm nor deny an investigation into Parker’s activities, but questions from an FBI agent suggest a possible probe into potential financial crimes.

Other personal finance influencers who turned into scam-busters began speaking out against the Parkers, sharing stories of financial ruin and desperation from alleged victims. As the lawsuits continue to pile up, the Parkers’ empire faces further scrutiny.
Critics argue that the Parkers are part of a larger ecosystem that preys on low-income, first-time investors, offering expensive programs that often lead to more debt. Some financial advisers point out that such schemes have proliferated in recent years, capitalizing on stimulus checks, unemployment support, and forgivable small-business loans.

Parker’s rise to fame was fueled by his appearances on podcasts and shows like “Earn Your
Leisure.” However, as the allegations against him gained traction, some of these appearances were removed. Despite the mounting evidence against him, Parker continued to portray a successful image on social media.
The Parkers’ story of supposed success mirrors the bootstrap narrative of former President Donald Trump, whom Greg Parker Jr. has cited as a role model. (He and Trump have something in common in both being accused of running afoul of RICO statutes, with Trump being criminally indicted in Georgia.)
Despite bankruptcy filings and financial stress, the Parkers have managed to build a multimillion-dollar empire that combined real estate deals with mentoring programs.
Other influencers have been accused of swindling real estate investors.

Two New Jersey real estate influencers and a prominent radio DJ have been accused of taking a $1.5 million investment for an apartment project that never materialized.
Anthony Barone and Anthony Martini filed a lawsuit last week in New Jersey Supreme Court regarding the alleged fraud, NorthJersey.com reported. The pair are seeking compensatory, consequential and punitive damages.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

NJ real estate influencer charged in Ponzi scheme​

Cesar Pina allegedly bilked investors out of millions

New Jersey real estate investor and influencer got his day in court on Wednesday, after months of allegations against him.
Cesar Pina was arrested for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Jersey announced. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and released on $1 million bond with electronic monitoring.

Pina and a celebrity radio personality partnered on real estate seminars across the country to help Pina build up a large social media following, according to the announcement. The radio personality isn’t named in the documents, but previous reports have suggested Power 105.1’s DJ Envy was Pina’s business partner.
In 2017, Pina began taking investments from alleged victims to purchase, remodel and sell real estate projects primarily in New Jersey, according to the Justice Department. Pina allegedly promised 20- to 45-percent returns within five months.

Instead, Pina failed to use the investments as promised, according to the charges. He allegedly lured new victim investments to pay prior victims and spend lavishly on himself.

“Promising returns that were too good to be true, Pina allegedly defrauded dozens of people of millions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger said in a statement.

The tables turned for Pina months ago when a pair of investors filed a lawsuit accusing Cesar and Jennifer Pina along with The Breakfast Club’s DJ Envy of defrauding the investors out of $1.5 million for an apartment project that never materialized. They accused the trio of taking off with their combined investment for projects including a 50-unit development in Paterson.

Pina faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
DJ Envy did not immediately comment in the aftermath of Pina’s arrest, but previously defended the real estate seminars as an opportunity to uplift the community, according to NBC New York. Federal officials reportedly removed electronic equipment from iHeartRadio offices as part of the investigation.

 
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