DJ Envy’s business partner was taken into police custody this week amid several fraud charges brought against both regarding their endeavors in real estate.
On Wednesday (October 18), RLS Media reported that New Jersey property investor Cesar Humberto Pina was arrested on charges relating to a wire-fraud scheme. The 45-year-old was released on a $1million secured bond with electronic monitoring after appearing in a Newark federal court.
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He is being accused of using his reach on social media to take advantage of his followers, promising high investment returns and allegedly tricking several people out of millions of dollars in the process.
Case documents and legal statements have revealed that Pina and the radio host are being investigated for seminars they’ve held across the country to entice and subsequently defraud investors.
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Earlier this month, Envy addressed the fraud allegations that have spawned several lawsuits against him and Pina. Against his legal team’s wishes, he took to the mic on The Breakfast Club in early October to clear the air regarding the accusations.
“Let me explain some things,” he 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.
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“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.”
He continued: “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.
“For anybody to say I was involved, that’s totally not true. I would never. I’ve been on radio close to 30 years and never in my 30 years’ time did I do nothing but try to uplift people… And I would never take a dollar from somebody.”
Charlamagne Tha God interjected by pointing out that DJ Envy has been accused of merely introducing the alleged victims to Cesar Pina rather than stealing money from them.
“Nah, they basically said I was privy to it and that wasn’t true at all,” Envy replied. “If you read the court documents, Cesar wrote an affidavit that says, ‘DJ Envy, RaaShaun Casey had no knowledge of me investing people’s money. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t part of those conversations. He wasn’t anywhere near those meetings.’
“And those are documents that are out there, so if we’re gonna talk about truth, let’s talk about the truth.”
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The Power 105.1 host, along with Cesar Pina and his wife Jessica, were sued in July by Anthony Barone and Anthony Martini, who claim they were defrauded out of $1.5 million over an apartment complex project that never materialized.
The plaintiffs said that they invested in two real estate ventures — the Taylor Company and Flip 2 Dao — but Envy and Pina took the money without following through with the project. Envy was also accused of purchasing a series of properties in Paterson, New Jersey, undervaluing them, and then fixing-and-flipping them or renting them out.
