The U.S. Department of Justice swooped down on the iHeartRadio station in New York that houses “The Breakfast Club” morning show in connection with an alleged fraud scheme involving a business associate of co-host DJ Envy.
According to NBC New York, FBI agents from New Jersey reportedly seized laptops, desk computers, hard drives and other electronic equipment.
Federal agents also arrested DJ Envy’s longtime business partner Cesar Pina, 45, on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, on wire fraud charges for allegedly engaging in a Ponzi-like scheme that defrauded dozens of investors out of millions of dollars.
According to @SarahWallace4NY of @NBCNewYork, DJ Envy had the FBI pay him a visit at work. They took laptops, hard drives, and cellphones. pic.twitter.com/QwcUUSBhDi
— . (@CAWBBBB) October 19, 2023
The news station also reported that Cina pleaded not guilty to the charges. He had to post a $1 million bond and was released on an electronic monitoring device with the order to not the leave the state of New Jersey.
According to the federal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Pina leveraged his friendship with DJ Envy to amass a vast social media following where he was able to attract investors and swindle them out of their money.
“As alleged in the complaint, Pina exploited celebrity status and social media to develop a devoted following of potential victims. Promising returns that were too good to be true, Pina allegedly defrauded dozens of people of millions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said in a press release obtained by NBC New York.
DJ Envy was not arrested, but some of the investors state that they entered into the deal with Envy’s associate due to his influence. They blame Envy for introducing them to Pina, who then allegedly plotted to steal their hard-earned money.
Moreover, Envy and Pina co-hosted multiple real estate seminars on opportunities for house flipping in distressed areas of New Jersey. The eventual investors have filed lawsuits claiming Pina promised he would rehab and flip a property, then provide a 30 percent return of the profits within months. The complainants said they never got their money back.
Envy did not comment Wednesday, but he did have something to say on his syndicated radio show last week regarding his associate’s alleged scheme:
“Let me explain some things,” DJ Envy began. “So Cesar and myself did seminars. Now, the reason I did these seminars is because I wanted to uplift my community. I wanted to teach my community about real estate. Things that I didn’t know when I was buying my first home. So I did these seminars and brought industry professionals to all these seminars, whether it was real estate agents from different markets, contractors, money lenders. I even brought Auction.com to actually show people how to purchase houses online. Now Cesar, if he took money, I wasn’t privy to it nor did I even know. But I do understand how people feel if they did give him money because I gave him a lot of money that I didn’t see a dollar of return [on].”
