DJ Envy’s ex-business partner Cesar Pina was arrested on fraud charges Wednesday then reports came out that federal officials raided the iHeartRadio offices and removed electronics.
via: HipHopDX
Envy’s lawyer Massimo D’Angelo confirmed with TMZ on Friday (October 20) that reports of Feds raiding his office and seizing equipment are just another example of the “continued sensationalization” of the media’s coverage of the case.
Law enforcement sources told the outlet the same, as well as a source at iHeartMedia. They did confirm, however, that the New Jersey Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI were at the offices to alert Envy that his business partner, Cesar Pina, had been arrested.
On Wednesday (October 18), NBC investigative reporter Sarah Wallace apparently incorrectly reported that the iHeartRadio office was raided by federal officials. Electronic equipment from the company’s Midtown Manhattan building, which is where The Breakfast Club operates out of, was taken for the investigation.
“An inside source tells us that the iHeartRadio offices were visited by the feds, who took out electronic equipment as part of this investigation,” she said.
The same day, 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.
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.
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.
“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.”
