All That Glitters

---

It was like something out of a fairy tale—or the Los Angeles society pages. As a crowd of celebrities and reality-show cast members mingled near displays of diamond jewelry at the five-star Hotel Bel-Air, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Ben Talei got down on one knee to propose to his girlfriend. “Congratulations!” a bewildered Kim Kardashian said to the couple. Then she looked at the stone. “Come on, now’s your time,” she joked about the ring. “You want it thicker.”

The November 2019 scene, caught on phone cam and later shared with the New York Post, was exactly the kind of spectacle the event’s organizer, Jona Rechnitz, must have hoped for. Rechnitz, the proprietor of a jewelry firm called Jadelle, had put together that evening’s Holiday Diamond Showcase to celebrate his business. Smiling wide, Rechnitz mingled easily with the attendees. Faye Resnick of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was there, as was Kris Jenner—the event’s official host. Yet Rechnitz didn’t stray far from Kardashian, who graciously accepted requests for selfies throughout the night.

Six-foot-four and 300 pounds, Rechnitz cut an imposing figure, but his dimpled cheeks and engaging eyes made him look younger than his 37 years. It was a face people tended to trust. His company’s profile was growing. That September, Kardashian had worn some of Jadelle’s bling to the Emmys. Jadelle recently announced a partnership with storied handbag brand Judith Leiber, and its jewelry had landed on the cover of Vogue Japan—huge accomplishments for a company that had existed for only two years.

The night was an opportunity to make big-ticket sales and to claim Jadelle’s spot as the go-to jewelry company for the city’s privileged class. Attendees tried on high-carat, multicolored diamond rings, necklaces, and earrings between hors d’oeuvres; a portion of the proceeds was promised to Toys for Tots. The party also marked a successful homecoming for Rechnitz, who had returned from New York to his native Los Angeles to launch Jadelle. His father was there, as were diamond dealers Rechnitz had worked with on both coasts. By all appearances, he was living his best life: he owned a Bugatti, rented an office at a premier Beverly Hills address, and paid $17,000 a month for the estate he lived in with his wife and six children.

Rechnitz’s return to the West Coast, however, was less a fresh start than an escape. In 2016, he had pled guilty in New York City to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, meaning that he had attempted to bribe public officials. When he left New York, he told a judge that he hoped to put his past behind him, to become a better man. Jadelle was his vehicle for doing so, and Los Angeles’s celebrity culture was the fuel, Rechnitz told the judge, that he needed to power his rebirth.

But shortly after the Holiday Diamond Showcase, much about Jadelle’s success would come into question; even the marriage proposal was later revealed to be a stunt. Within months, Rechnitz faced multiple lawsuits for fraud and theft, allegations that he’d taken out multimillion-dollar loans using stolen property as collateral, and accusations that he’d leveraged his celebrity connections to create a false impression of credibility.

Yet, despite a decade of legal troubles, Rechnitz to date has escaped serious consequences. He has yet to spend a single day in prison, even for the New York conviction. In reporting this story, I reviewed thousands of pages of legal documents and spoke to 15 associates, former friends, and lawyers involved in more than a dozen lawsuits against Rechnitz. Many of them think Rechnitz avoided justice because he cooperated with federal authorities in New York, and may still be acting as a government informant—something Rechnitz himself is said to have claimed. Whatever the truth, nothing seems to stick to him.

Chapter 1

Rechnitz was born into an affluent Orthodox Jewish family with roots in California. He attended Yavneh Hebrew Academy, a prestigious private school, and graduated from Yeshiva University Los Angeles High School, in the same class as conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. Rechnitz’s father, Robert, worked as a real estate developer, served as the national finance cochair for Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s 2016 presidential campaign, and was active in American Friends of Likud, a not-for-profit outfit that promotes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political party through educational programs. After attending New York’s Yeshiva University, Rechnitz married his girlfriend, Rachel, and followed his dad into real estate. By 2007, he had a job at the U.S. branch of international development firm Africa Israel Investments, owned by Israeli billionaire diamond magnate Lev Leviev. He eventually rose to become the company’s director of acquisitions.

While at Africa Israel Investments, Rechnitz noticed that a client of his had a car with plates marked “Sheriff,” which allowed him to park wherever he wanted—street cleaning, tow-away zones, and handicap signs be damned. The client offered to introduce him to the man who’d provided them, Jeremy Reichberg, an official liaison between the New York Police Department and Borough Park’s Orthodox Jewish community. As luck would have it, Reichberg would soon be hosting a benefit for the NYPD’s football team. Rechnitz spent $5,000 on a ticket to get into a room with the department’s top brass. According to later testimony by Rechnitz, he made an impression on Reichberg. His donation even netted him a plaque from the team.

“It made him look good, made me look good, and we started to become friends,” Rechnitz said in court, according to The New York Times. “I didn’t know many people that had connections with police, growing up in Los Angeles, and I thought this would be an awesome tool for me personally and for my business.” His time with Reichberg also scored him points professionally. When Rechnitz’s boss came into town on a business trip, Reichberg had the police escort Leviev from his private plane.

In 2011, on the verge of turning 30, Rechnitz decided to establish his own real estate firm. He named it JSR Capital, using his initials. Rechnitz rented an office in the heart of the midtown diamond district. It was at JSR that Rechnitz developed a taste for the high life. He’d later testify that he charged more than $1 million annually to his credit cards; one lawyer claimed Rechnitz’s receipts showed that he spent more on tickets to New York Knicks games than he did on his taxes.

Though his real estate company was considered a midlevel firm, Rechnitz spent liberally to forge connections at the police department. The first of many trips he helped finance occurred in February 2013, when he and Reichberg coughed up nearly $60,000 to charter a private jet to fly themselves and two police officials to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. According to prosecutors, they also bankrolled the group’s stay at the MGM Grand, as well as a female escort who joined them on the plane wearing a sexy stewardess outfit provided by Reichberg. Once home, according to court documents, Rechnitz and Reichberg continued to send gifts to at least one of the officers. In August, they paid part of the hotel bill for that officer’s vacation with his family in Rome. A few months later, the pair bought him a $3,000 watch and paid $6,000 to install railings at his Staten Island home. They even showed up to his house at Christmas—two Hanukkah-celebrating Jews in elf costumes, delivering jewelry and a Nintendo.

It was around this time that Philip Banks III, the top Black official on the force, was promoted to the NYPD’s highest uniformed position, and requested that his protégé, Michael Harrington, move from Brooklyn South to work as his executive officer. It just so happened that Harrington was one of the officers who did favors for Reichberg, and he was happy to satisfy yet another request: introducing Rechnitz and Reichberg to Chief Banks. The three men began dining out twice a month. Rechnitz paid for meals at glitzy Kosher restaurants, and they bought Banks a ring that Rechnitz testified had belonged to Muhammad Ali.

In December 2013, Rechnitz and Reichberg decided to charter another private jet, this time to the Dominican Republic. The guest list included Banks and his longtime friend Norman Seabrook, who was president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA), a union for New York City’s jail guards. During one especially debauched evening, Rechnitz testified, Seabrook admitted to wishing he’d been more financially successful—he was in crippling mortgage debt. What’s more, he’d recently lost his beloved dog. Distraught and inebriated, he opened up his shirt to show Rechnitz the tattoo of the animal on his chest. “You should be making money,” Rechnitz told him, according to testimony. Seabrook agreed. “It’s time Norman Seabrook got paid,” he responded.

Rechnitz soon connected Seabrook with an old family friend, Murray Huberfeld, founder of a hedge fund called Platinum Partners. Rechnitz’s grandfather and Huberfeld’s father grew up in Poland, and both had survived the Holocaust. Rechnitz had sold Huberfeld apartments on the Upper West Side, and he came to Huberfeld with a new business opportunity: Would Platinum Partners be interested in investments from Seabrook’s union? The only catch, Rechnitz told him, was that Seabrook would have to get a kickback.

Eventually, Seabrook directed $20 million of COBA’s money to the fund, according to court documents. To uphold his side of the deal, Rechnitz needed a way to pay Seabrook. Rechnitz decided he would pull $60,000 from his own savings, then make himself whole by sending fake invoices to Huberfeld for eight pairs of courtside Knicks tickets. He allegedly routed the ticket transaction through a business acquaintance of his, who was later charged for a Ponzi-style ticket-reselling scheme. Now he just needed to get Seabrook the cash. One day in December 2014, Rechnitz visited the Ferragamo store on Fifth Avenue. Emerging with a new men’s handbag, he stuffed $60,000 cash inside and walked a few blocks to an idling SUV where Seabrook was waiting. Little did the men know that law enforcement was watching everything—and the exchange of money would eventually take everyone down.

Everyone, that is, except Jona Rechnitz.

“Rechnitz has been, without exaggeration, one of the single most important and prolific white collar cooperating witnesses in the recent history of the Southern District of New York.”

Over the next two years, investigators questioned more than twenty police officials and charged seven people with crimes ranging from misapplying police resources to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. Eight people associated with Platinum Partners were indicted in a $1 billion investment-fraud enterprise for operating “like a Ponzi scheme,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Rechnitz was facing significant prison time. But according to court records, Rechnitz cut a deal with prosecutors to become a cooperating government witness. Rechnitz subsequently met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office some 80 times. He spilled dirt on his business transactions with Huberfeld and Reichberg, and cooperated with a probe of New York mayor Bill de Blasio’s fundraising practices after testifying that he’d helped raise $100,000 for de Blasio’s 2013 campaign, expecting political favors in return. (Asked about Rechnitz by CBS News, de Blasio called him “a liar and a felon.” De Blasio was not charged.)

The federal case was considered the biggest modern corruption scandal in New York City at the time. In signing the cooperating witness agreement, Rechnitz agreed to plead guilty to the fraud conspiracy charge and to testify against his co-conspirators. Fighting for his freedom, Rechnitz appeared to hold nothing back on the witness stand. Though Rechnitz was facing 20 years in prison, prosecutors nevertheless praised his candor. “Rechnitz has been, without exaggeration, one of the single most important and prolific white collar cooperating witnesses in the recent history of the Southern District of New York,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell in a 51-page memo.

As Rechnitz awaited his sentencing, two new realities became apparent. First, he was no longer seen as a macher in his community of God-fearing, family-minded men, but as another of the city’s countless grifters. Second, his name was synonymous with fraud and snitching; who would invest with him now?

And Rechnitz desperately needed income. While he claimed that his real estate firm owned as much as $100 million in property, he faced foreclosure on one of his prime holdings: 32,000 square feet of retail and office space that took up an entire block in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn. Rechnitz also had mounting legal fees and was facing millions in potential restitution payments to COBA. So Rechnitz did what innumerable dreamers have done: He went west to reinvent himself.

Chapter 2

When Rechnitz returned home to Los Angeles in 2017, he needed a place to live. Finding one was no easy task. The house had to be large enough to fit his family of eight, within walking distance of a reputable synagogue, and owned by someone who wouldn’t slam the door when they looked up his credit or googled his name. To help, Rechnitz turned to the Jewish community. A local real estate broker suggested a home owned by an ER doctor and property investor named Joe Englanoff. At first Englanoff demurred; he’d heard about Rechnitz’s past. But then Englanoff’s father called. “Look, I’ve known Jona’s dad for years,” the elder Englanoff told his son. “We don’t do business, but he made a personal call to me, and if you could find it in your heart to give him a second chance, because he’s trying to move out here to California from New York. He’s really in a bad way. He’s reformed.”

Englanoff offered to rent Rechnitz a house down the street from his own in the coveted Beverlywood neighborhood. The modern Italian-style estate had a pool, waterfall jacuzzi, basketball court, in-ground trampoline, and balcony with city views. The rent was $17,000 a month.

The two men settled into a friendly relationship. Their families saw each other at temple functions and waved hello on the street. Englanoff’s family was charmed by Rechnitz’s generosity and personal touch. After Englanoff’s son mentioned that he liked basketball, Rechnitz showed up at his house with former Celtics forward Paul Pierce.

With his family established in one of L.A.’s trendiest neighborhoods, Rechnitz turned his attention to building his new company, Jadelle Jewelry and Diamonds. The company was registered in late 2017 in Delaware under Rechnitz’s wife’s name. The logo, a butterfly, carried its own significance—the endeavor would be a metamorphosis and a new beginning.

It would take more than a logo to grow the company; Rechnitz needed both gems and clients. Soon, Jadelle was trumpeting its first big get: Former Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal, with dozens of carats of glittering diamonds hanging from his neck, appeared on the company’s Instagram account in June 2018. “Another satisfied client @shaq wearing the Jaddelle [sic] HAMSA proudly,” read the post.

Two weeks later, Jadelle’s account shared a post from celebrity realtor Josh Altman, of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing. “@jadellejewelry of Beverly Hills got me looking like Mr. T today,” read the caption. “Not sure this is good for my neck.”

One connection Rechnitz made in those early days was Peter Voutsas, who remembered Rechnitz striding into his Rodeo Drive storefront with otherworldly levels of confidence. “He told me, ‘I’ve heard you’re my biggest competition. We should work together on sales, because we have mutual clients,’” said Voutsas, who had never heard of Rechnitz.

At first, Voutsas was skeptical of Rechnitz’s pitch, so he consulted his peers. The network of diamond dealers and wholesalers in L.A. was small and tight-knit. Many of them, like Rechnitz, were Orthodox, and had followed previous generations into the industry. Updates and gossip flowed easily. When Voutsas called several other jewelers whose names Rechnitz had dropped, they vouched for him and told Voutsas that they were impressed by his celebrity clientele. No one had a bad word to say. That was enough for Voutsas, and the two began what Voutsas called a “successful and trusting relationship.”

Jewelry is sold largely on consignment, known as memorandum or memo, and while there is usually a written agreement, paper is only as good as the person behind it. “This is one of the few businesses left on this earth that’s done on handshake, where it’s based on trust,” said Jerry Kroll, a lawyer who handles insurance cases in the industry. It worked like this: Rechnitz would approach Voutsas with clients and ask to take some of Voutsas’s jewelry on memo. Voutsas would tell him how much a piece cost; if Rechnitz sold it for more than that, he kept the difference. If Rechnitz didn’t complete the sale, he returned the item. In short order, the two men did more than thirty successful transactions together, which Voutsas said totaled $39.4 million, and were hobnobbing basketball stars like O’Neal, Scottie Pippen, and Sam Cassell. “At the beginning it was legitimate,” Voutsas told me.

Rechnitz even told Voutsas about a tactic he used to drum up high-net-worth clients: He bought the best seats at basketball games. “If you have front-row seats on the floor or one or two rows back, all you have to do is look to the left or the right and you see famous people,” Voutsas said. There, Rechnitz could mention his businesses and work his charm.

It was at a game, Rechnitz told acquaintances, that he met the man who would become one of his most loyal clients and business partners, boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. Early in Jadelle’s posts, Mayweather appeared in two videos on the company’s Instagram account, wearing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gem-encrusted watches and thick gold chain necklaces. “It’s one thing to buy jewelry from @jadellebh but it’s another thing to wear it fashionably,” read one caption that tagged Mayweather. Another post promoted Jadelle’s appearance at a jewelry expo in Miami Beach: “@JadelleBH in MIAMI—By day you can find us at The Original Miami Antique Show… and after dark, we’ll be catering diamonds to our local clients—with #tbe @floydmayweather. Thanks Champ🙏🏼.”

One day in June 2019, Rechnitz told Voutsas that he had a meeting scheduled with the Kardashian sisters at one of their homes. He asked if he could borrow a security guard for the day to protect the jewelry, Voutsas told me. Over the following weeks, Jadelle posted a slew of photos: Kim in a diamond cross necklace, Kylie in a double strand necklace of teardrop diamonds, Khloé with trillion-cut diamond earrings, and Kourtney in heart-shaped diamond studs. It’s unclear whether the Kardashians paid for the jewelry or Rechnitz gifted them the pieces in exchange for posts, but Voutsas said he was paid for the items he’d given to Rechnitz. The social-media campaign brought Jadelle significant celebrity clout—and helped grow its Instagram followers to more than 175,000.

The coup de grâce was an appearance Kim made on the red carpet at the Emmys that year, wearing three layers of diamond chains and a thick cross. Two months later, she was the star of Rechnitz’s Holiday Diamond Showcase. There was just one thing holding Rechnitz back from a future of glitz and glamour: He had to fly back to New York for sentencing.

“I am a changed man,” Rechnitz wrote to U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ahead of his December 2019 sentencing hearing. Rechnitz was facing up to 20 years in prison and millions in restitution.

Rechnitz blamed his actions on his naivete and a work culture that rewarded social climbers. “While living in New York City, I wrongly felt pressure to become a big shot,” he told the judge. “I was in my late twenties, and big people in the real estate industry were dealing with me. My ego was big, and I so badly wanted to impress these people in order to advance my career and profile.”

Family and friends focused on the new, redeemed Rechnitz. His wife, Rachel, promised the judge that her husband had “become a much better, humble, more open and truthful person.” His neighbor and landlord, Joe Englanoff, wrote a letter saying that Rechnitz appeared to be making amends and wanted to leave his past behind. His father, Robert, even tried to accept some of the blame, saying, “It was unfair of me to allow Jona to take so many responsibilities upon himself without my guidance and involvement.”

Judge Hellerstein, however, had followed Rechnitz’s testimony in the other trials and drew his own conclusion. “He cheapens people. He works on their insecurities and their quest for material possessions and just does the opposite. He diminishes people,” Hellerstein wrote in his decision.

Rechnitz’s co-conspirators had already been sentenced. Huberfeld and Reichberg received two and a half and four years in prison, respectively; Seabrook, who took the bribes, was sentenced to nearly five years. Harrington, who had introduced Rechnitz to Chief Banks, was sentenced to two years of probation and 180 hours of community service. (Banks, who appeared to have learned that the feds were closing in and abruptly quit the NYPD a day after investigators applied for a wiretap in the case, was never charged.) In light of those sentences—and how vital Rechnitz had been to the case, according to the assistant U.S. attorney—Hellerstein sentenced Rechnitz to five months in prison and five months’ house arrest, and ordered him to repay as much as $10 million to the union. Rechnitz immediately vowed to appeal and was released on bail. He flew back to Los Angeles and his growing jewelry business.

What’s more, according to court records, Voutsas later got wind that Rechnitz hadn’t sold the jewelry at all, but instead pawned it for a $1 million cash loan.

Peter Voutsas had consigned roughly $7 million worth of jewelry with Rechnitz before the 2019 holidays, including two pieces Voutsas took on memo from another jeweler, David Rovinsky: a 43-carat yellow diamond ring with a $1.9 million price tag, and a 134-carat yellow radiant diamond necklace priced at $1.5 million, according to court filings. Voutsas was told that 16 pieces sold, but by late January 2020 he had yet to be paid for them. What’s more, according to court records, Voutsas later got wind that Rechnitz hadn’t sold the jewelry at all, but instead pawned it for a $1 million cash loan with an interest rate of 6.5 percent per month. On January 21, Voutsas received a series of panicked texts from Rechnitz.

“I’m dealing with a huge crisis now and my dad is at bank trying to sort out issue for me in regards to all this,” Rechnitz texted Voutsas, according to screenshots included in a later lawsuit. “I understand if you never want to deal with me again or see my fave [sic] ever again i’m so sorry.”

As the men texted back and forth, Voutsas learned that other jewelers were hounding Rechnitz for money, too. One of them was Oved Anter, who had consigned seven pieces of jewelry worth $2.8 million to Jadelle, according to a lawsuit Anter later filed. When Anter asked for his money, Rechnitz offered various excuses, and at one point begged for leniency claiming that his mother had suddenly become ill. “Dont say a word paramedics were here. So i’m not in the mood. My siblings dont know. She had a blood clot. Please,” he texted Anter. But by then, Anter had begun to doubt everything Rechnitz told him. “You already use that excuse a few days ago with somebody else,” he responded.

Four days later, Rechnitz texted Voutsas, asking him to keep quiet about any issues between them—particularly since another jeweler had flown in to check on his own diamonds: “I also have Moty Klein in town at the same time while this is all going on which is extra stress as he can’t hear any of this.” Klein, whose name is spelled Moti, was one of the owners of Julius Klein Diamonds, which shared the same office building as JSR Capital in New York. Even after Rechnitz’s criminal conviction, Klein’s son had consigned several jewelry pieces with Rechnitz at the holiday showcase. Now Klein wanted his money, as did David Rovinsky, the jeweler whose pieces Voutsas had loaned to Rechnitz.

On March 18, 2020, Rovinsky sued Voutsas for loaning his jewelry to a known felon. The two settled and in April 2020 filed a joint suit against Rechnitz, claiming that he had stolen jewelry worth $7 million. Anter filed his own suit in June. Each lawsuit echoed the other: stories of early sales followed by bounced checks and pawned jewelry. In his suit, Anter referred to the ordeal as one of “Jona Rechnitz’s blazing trail of Ponzi scheme frauds.”

In fact, according to a separate lawsuit brought by real estate investor Victor Franco Noval, Rechnitz had been bankrolling his company for at least a year on borrowed money. The suit alleged that, in January 2019, Rechnitz had taken out a sizable loan with an astronomical interest rate in Jadelle’s name. He borrowed the money from Noval, who was trying to sell one of the most coveted plots of land in Beverly Hills, known as the Mountain, for $1 billion. In an email exchange coordinated by his lawyer, Noval told me that he was introduced to Rechnitz through their fathers, who worked in real estate. Shortly after, according to Noval’s suit, he gave Rechnitz a $2.9 million loan with a 9 percent monthly interest rate. As collateral, Rechnitz handed over diamonds valued at more than $7 million and a 2012 Bugatti worth $400,000. But in his lawsuit, Noval claimed that by the end of the year, Rechnitz had failed to make any payments on his loan and his debt had ballooned to $5.8 million.

Just weeks after Rechnitz was formally sentenced in New York, according to Noval’s suit, Rechnitz asked Noval’s brother if he could sell the jewelry he’d used as collateral at an upcoming trunk show; whatever profit he made from sales would pay down the loan. Noval allowed Rechnitz to retake ownership of the jewelry pieces for one day, and in exchange Rechnitz wrote two checks, for $2.5 million and $1.3 million.

The day after the trunk show, Noval’s brother went to Rechnitz’s office to collect the jewelry, only to be told that Rechnitz had an interested buyer and wanted to keep the pieces. When Noval tried to cash Rechnitz’s checks, they bounced. Noval filed a report with the Beverly Hills Police Department alleging that he’d been “swindled and defrauded.” A month later, Noval filed his suit against Rechnitz. In it he stated that he believed Rechnitz wasn’t the legitimate owner of the diamonds he’d used as collateral; he suspected that they, too, were on loan.

Noval’s suit claimed that Rechnitz had acted as if he was impervious to criminal convictions, and it blamed his attitude on Rechnitz’s cooperation with federal authorities in New York. “Rechnitz mistakenly believes that this provides him immunity from committing fraud in California,” it read. “The fact that Jona only received 10 months custody time with 5 months house arrest has only emboldened him to commit more fraud, grand theft, and to issue worthless instruments.” Rechnitz and his wife both pled the fifth, declining to provide their side of the story for the record during the proceedings.

In April, Noval joined Voutsas and Anter in filing an involuntary bankruptcy suit against Jadelle Jewelry and Diamonds in an effort to liquidate the company’s assets and recoup some of their money. As proceedings continued into the summer, a motion was filed by an unexpected third party—the Department of Justice. Government attorneys submitted a request for a limited stay of discovery in the trial, arguing that it could jeopardize “parallel civil and criminal” FBI and IRS investigations into Noval “and associates.”

“The government believes that its investigations would be severely compromised if discovery into matters under criminal investigation were permitted, as it would likely reveal sensitive facts,” the filing read. (Additional details were sealed; a judge denied The Atavist’s request to unseal the documents.)

The motion revealed that Noval may have financed real estate transactions and development, including the Mountain, with money stolen from the government of Kuwait and transferred from a bank identified as “AUB” into California accounts. “Based on the government’s present investigation, some or all of the funds for the Noval-Jadelle Transfers appear to be traceable to the AUB Transfers,” the attorneys wrote in the public filing. (Noval’s attorney said that no criminal charges were filed, and the government told him that any criminal investigation related to the properties has been closed.)

The motion also announced that the FBI was separately investigating “the alleged theft or taking by fraud of millions of dollars in diamonds while on consignment with Jadelle.” Agents had recently obtained 31 pieces of jewelry believed reported stolen by jewelers. The pieces were confiscated from the home of a person identified by the initials TT; Fish and Wildlife Service agents had raided TT’s home earlier that month looking for two endangered ring-tailed lemurs, which are illegal to own in the U.S. For those suing Rechnitz, the DOJ’s motion gave them some hope that authorities were looking into Rechnitz’s business in California. But no charges have been filed against Rechnitz for the allegedly stolen jewelry.

Ultimately, the judge denied the DOJ’s request for a stay, arguing that there was no cause to grant it. And after months of legal filings, the trustee appointed to oversee the bankruptcy case moved to dismiss, because it was unlikely to generate any financial recoveries. Instead, the trustee accepted a settlement of $215,000. Noval, Anter, and Voutsas objected, arguing that “rather than proceed with the pursuit of tens of millions of dollars of potentially avoidable and recoverable transfers, the Trustee instead has capitulated and decided to do a deal with the devil, in the process allowing Jona Rechnitz, the perpetrator of this massive fraud, to buy his way out of this case.” The judge dismissed the case anyway.

Voutsas’s and Rovinsky’s case was ultimately settled, and Anter withdrew his suit. (His lawyer said he could not disclose the reason for withdrawing it.) Despite those victories, Rechnitz’s troubles continued to mount. Three more companies sued him for fraud from mid-2020 to early 2021. In all, the six lawsuits against Rechnitz asserted that he owed more than $15.5 million. L.A.’s diamond industry had by now largely blacklisted him, and it seemed as if Jadelle’s reputation was finished. One day in September 2020, Jadelle posted an Instagram photo of musician Justin Bieber wearing its jewels. The caption mentioned “ups and downs.” “We keep pushing and are here to stay. We shall prevail. Love always wins. Thank you to our customers and your loyalty. ❤️,” it read. The day after that post, Jadelle’s Instagram went quiet.

Then, in the spring of 2021, Rechnitz announced a new venture—one that would bring him into the highest echelons of the sporting world.

Chapter 3

On May 5, 2021, Rechnitz called Joe Englanoff, his neighbor and landlord, with a proposition. He was working with Floyd Mayweather to organize a fight against YouTuber Logan Paul. Though Mayweather retired in 2017 with a 50-0 record, the 44-year-old had recently agreed to an unsanctioned fight with the 26-year-old Paul. Rechnitz was now considered part of Mayweather’s entourage, called the Money Team. He’d traded his suits for black T-shirts, “TMT” baseball caps.

“He said to me, ‘You know, I just got off the phone with Floyd, and we have this wonderful opportunity to buy these tickets,’ ” Englanoff told me. If Englanoff fronted some money—about a million dollars—Rechnitz could sell the tickets for up to ten times the face value; Englanoff would get his money back plus 25 percent of the profits. Rechnitz had introduced Englanoff to Mayweather. In fact, Englanoff tried to sell a Bel Air property to the boxer. In 2019, he visited Mayweather’s home in Las Vegas, and joined Rechnitz on a private flight to the Super Bowl aboard Mayweather’s jet. (The boxer did not join them.) Englanoff felt comfortable enough to invest $1.4 million, with Rechnitz acting as Mayweather’s agent.

In June, Englanoff flew to Miami for the fight. When Mayweather stepped into the ring at the Hard Rock Stadium to shake Paul’s hand, he wore a T-shirt bearing the red logo of EthereumMax, a new cryptocurrency Rechnitz was helping to market. The fighter told reporters that he was paid $30 million to wear the logo on his shorts. (According to a press release, EthereumMax would be the “exclusive cryptocurrency accepted for online ticket purchasing for the highly anticipated Floyd Mayweather vs. Logan Paul Pay-Per-View event.”) The match went the full eight rounds and no winner was declared, but that barely mattered: Mayweather reportedly made as much as $25 million from the event. After the fight, Englanoff joined Rechnitz in a hotel room, where Rechnitz sat at a desk tallying bricks of cash, surrounded by armed guards. In one corner, men operated whirring cash counters. “There was money everywhere,” Englanoff told me.

According to the lawsuit Englanoff later filed, things soon began to unravel. Weeks after the fight, Englanoff still hadn’t received a penny for the tickets. At the end of June, nearly a month after the fact, Rechnitz met with Englanoff in person and said that there had been a change of plans: The team reinvested Englanoff’s profits into an August exhibition fight between Yordenis Ugás and Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas. Rechnitz told Englanoff not to worry, he would now make even more money.

Englanoff didn’t want assurances—he demanded to be paid the amount he was promised. According to the suit Englanoff later filed, Rechnitz agreed to send Englanoff a wire for the profits, and one of his partners would send a check for the original investment. Neither materialized. “Instead,” the suit read, “a series of false statements and excuses began.” First, Rechnitz claimed to be in Hawaii, and said that the wire didn’t come through “because of the different cut-off times.” Then Rechnitz claimed that his account had been locked because of fraud. On July 23, nearly two months after the Mayweather fight, Rechnitz wrote Englanoff a check for $100,000, calling it a “religious act and gesture.”

Eventually, according to the lawsuit, they reached a written agreement: Englanoff would agree to invest in the second fight and receive at least $4.9 million no later than September 6. But when the day came, Rechnitz had bad news: Sales for the event were lower than anticipated. Still, according to the lawsuit, he promised Englanoff $5.7 million within ten days. Again the money didn’t arrive. According to the suit, Rechnitz dispatched his father, Robert, to reassure Englanoff. On the phone, the elder Rechnitz said that he had invested in the tickets himself, and assured Englanoff that his son was good for the money. Englanoff said he told him: “Your son’s running a Ponzi scheme.”

The next day, Rechnitz wired Englanoff another $100,000, calling it an “act of good faith,” according to the suit. Rechnitz followed up with an in-person meeting with his father at Englanoff’s home later that week. There the Rechnitzes said that they had great news. They had reinvested Englanoff’s money into a third match between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder scheduled for October, and would pay Englanoff a total of $5.8 million, according to the suit. Robert Rechnitz personally guaranteed the full payment. He put his hand on a Torah to drive home the point. But that fight, too, failed to meet financial expectations, according to the suit. Rechnitz reinvested Englanoff’s money in a fourth fight. By then Englanoff no longer believed he’d ever recoup his investment.

But as it turned out, Rechnitz was facing another problem: EthereumMax, the cryptocurrency he’d helped promote during the fights, had gone belly-up—and was about to come under investigation.

EthereumMax launched on May 14, 2021, with copious celebrity endorsements, including Mayweather, Paul Pierce, and Kim Kardashian. Just two weeks after EthereumMax was unveiled, Pierce tweeted that he had made more money since the cryptocurrency’s launch than he had as a commentator for ESPN all year. Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Antonio Brown promoted it on Instagram three days later. That same week, Miami’s Liv and Story nightclubs announced that they would begin accepting crypto as payment—but only EthereumMax. Kardashian shared the announcement on her Instagram.

Despite the hype, EthereumMax lost 93 percent of its value in just two months. In January 2022, ten plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the company for making false or misleading statements to investors through social-media advertisements that disguised their control over a large percentage of the tokens. “It just stood out as one of the most egregious examples of a crypto scam,” said John Jasnoch, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, when I interviewed him. According to the class action lawsuit, Rechnitz had been instrumental in drumming up publicity for the currency. “EthereumMax’s entire business model relies on using constant marketing and promotional activities, often from ‘trusted’ celebrities, to dupe potential investors into trusting the financial opportunities available with EMAX Tokens,” the lawsuit claimed. “Rechnitz provided … access to several high-profile celebrities that were willing to tout EMAX Tokens in exchange for under-the-table payments.”

The lawsuit alleged that Rechnitz had made hundreds of thousands of dollars from liquidating his EMAX tokens when he knew that promotions were going to drive up the currency’s value. It also said that Mayweather was paid $2.5 million as a “marquee promoter.” (This wasn’t Mayweather’s first brush with crypto, or with legal trouble for promoting it. He’d was fined $615,000 in 2018 for promoting Initial Coin Offerings, another blockchain currency, with DJ Khaled.)

This time the federal government intervened. The Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Pierce and Kardashian in 2022, and announced settlements with each—for $1.4 million and $1.26 million, respectively. Neither Mayweather nor Rechnitz were fined by the SEC. Investigators there declined to comment for this story, and wouldn’t confirm whether any investigations into Rechnitz or Mayweather were ongoing.

As Englanoff’s family exited, Rechnitz stared at Englanoff’s 15-year-old son, made a threatening gesture, and yelled, “Do you have something to say to me?”

After eight months of waiting for his money, Englanoff filed a February 2022 lawsuit against Rechnitz and Mayweather for breach of contract, asking for $15 million. Less than a week later, Englanoff claims, he and his family began receiving threats. On February 7, Englanoff parked his Tesla outside his office and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “I look up and there’s this really big, like six-foot-five thug, and behind him is a second guy, and they said, ‘We’re sent here by Jona. You’re fucking with the wrong guy,’ ” Englanoff told me. (He subsequently made the same claim when applying for a restraining order against Rechnitz.)

In mid-June, Rechnitz filed his own lawsuit against Englanoff, alleging that Rechnitz had been defrauded because Englanoff’s house was in poorer condition than originally stated. (Englanoff had filed a petition to evict Rechnitz from the property.) Two weeks later, Englanoff said, Rechnitz approached him on their street and made what Englanoff considered a blatant threat. “He said, ‘Either you drop the case against me or I’m going to bring up this whole thing about you being a tax cheat,’ ” Englanoff told me. “And I said, ‘Jona, it’s not true. It’s not even close to true.’ His response to me was, ‘Who cares about truth? Once I get your good name through the mud, try and get [it] back. You’ll never get the genie back in the bottle.’ ” (Englanoff reported the incident to the FBI. Rechnitz did not respond to a request for comment on this or any other allegations reported in this story.)

Where once the Englanoffs and Rechnitzes had waved to each other on the street, now every interaction was heated. The feud continued undiminished for nearly a year. In the spring of 2023, Englanoff’s wife was shooting video of the house rented by Rechnitz when he approached her car and began arguing, according to a restraining order request she later filed.

“Now I’m gonna turn ugly quick,” Rechnitz allegedly said.

“Oh, like you haven’t yet,” she responded.

“Oh, you are about to see, I’ve been holding back. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Uh ha, that sounds like a threat, sweety,” said Englanoff’s wife.

To which Rechnitz allegedly responded: “It is a threat!”

Finally, on June 14, 2023, an incident sent the two families over the edge. That night, Englanoff was out having dinner with his family for his mother’s birthday when he saw Rechnitz at the same restaurant. As Englanoff’s family were leaving, Rechnitz stared at Englanoff’s 15-year-old son, made a threatening gesture, and yelled, “Do you have something to say to me?” according to a request for a permanent restraining order filed by Englanoff’s wife the day after the confrontation. In the request, she cited the threats made to her family, writing that Rechnitz “knows dangerous and violent people” who were “not afraid to cause harm to people.” She also noted that her husband had spoken to the FBI about the harassment.

Rechnitz offered an alternative version of events in a statement he gave the court, claiming that the teenager had made faces at him throughout dinner. “It appeared that the Englanoffs had enlisted the teenager to vex me and cause an incident to erupt,” he wrote. (The Englanoffs ultimately received a temporary restraining order; nothing came of the application for a permanent one.)

On the same day as the restaurant confrontation, a bizarre YouTube video of Englanoff had appeared online. It was titled “Exposing LA’s Biggest Tax Cheat,” and was produced by an influencer named Spencer Cornelia, whose channel has more than half a million subscribers. Most of Cornelia’s more than 500 videos focus on juicy celebrity lawsuits and wily scams. The ten-minute clip about Englanoff, which as of this writing had more than 116,000 views, argued that Englanoff illegally claimed he resided in Nevada to avoid paying state income tax. (Englanoff denied these allegations and told me that he offered to show Cornelia his tax records.)

It wasn’t the first video Cornelia posted about Englanoff—it was the replacement. The first, still viewable on the media-sharing platform Rumble, was about Englanoff’s lawsuit against Mayweather for the proceeds from the fight tickets. After Cornelia uploaded it, he got a call from Rechnitz. “The defendants in the case reached out to me and said, ‘Hold on, everything in that lawsuit is false, and here’s the proof,’ ” Cornelia told me. “That led me down a pathway of looking into Englanoff and making a video on him.” Cornelia uploaded the new video and then did something he said he’d never done before: He registered multiple URLs incorporating Englanoff’s and his wife’s names and embedded the YouTube video on them. He denied that Rechnitz paid him to do so, but Cornelia told me, “Admittedly, I’ve hung out with Jona a couple times.”

That September, Englanoff told me, he was followed as he and his wife drove to a sushi restaurant in the San Fernando Valley. Halfway through their meal, Englanoff told me, two large men walked into the restaurant and threatened him. “They started screaming at me, ‘Hey, you tax cheat. Hey, Floyd’s gonna fuck you up. Jona’s gonna fuck you up,’ ” Englanoff said. “I take my phone and I flip it on them, and it’s kind of like turning on the lights on cockroaches—they start to scatter and get out of there.” (Englanoff showed me soundless security footage in which the men left once Englanoff started filming them, retreating to a black SUV outside.)

Ten days later, Englanoff says, his 20-year-old daughter was approached by a man in the parking lot outside her doctor’s office. She called her father, terrified. To Englanoff the message was clear: We can get at your kids.

Englanoff reported both incidents to the FBI and provided the license plate of the SUV in the restaurant footage. He said that two FBI agents came to his home to interview his family and told him that a recent federal law against cyberbullying might be applicable. Later, an agent sent Englanoff a photo and asked his daughter if it was the the man who’d approached her. She said that it looked like him, but Englanoff has yet to hear anything more from the agency. (The FBI declined to comment.)

In the summer of 2023, something rare happened to Jona Rechnitz: He lost in court. In June, a judge granted $17.7 million plus interest to Noval, the real estate developer. “Ultimately the jewelry was never returned, and the loan was not repaid,” the judge wrote in his decision. He concluded: “There is no doubt in the court’s mind that the jewelry was taken by fraud.”

The victory seemed to pierce what Rechnitz’s alleged victims had come to believe was his impenetrable veneer. But Noval still had to collect the money, and Rechnitz claimed that he didn’t have it. Noval and his lawyer needed to file subpoenas to prove that Rechnitz was wrong—but doing so would take time and a lot of money.

Enter Joe Englanoff. By October 2023, Rechnitz had finally moved out of the Beverlywood house, but Englanoff was still waiting for a trial date for his own lawsuit. He and Noval shared the same lawyer, who now approached Englanoff with a proposition: Instead of waiting on his own judgment—and for Noval to be paid first—Englanoff could buy a controlling interest in the Noval settlement. Noval was tied up in his own legal battles with the federal government, but Englanoff had money to spare. The two hammered out an agreement. Englanoff registered a company to be the official party to the judgment, entitling him to any money collected from Rechnitz. He tauntingly named it Pay Up JR.

Since then, Englanoff’s team has received hundreds of pages in subpoenaed bank accounts associated with Rechnitz. Statements from September 2022 to September 2023 show payments to LLCs that Englanoff’s legal team says can be tied to Rechnitz, including $7.6 million from billionaire Robert Smith, who is producing a documentary series on Mayweather, and nearly $6 million paid to a company called Mayweather Promotions. The records also show payments totaling $680,000 to Rachel’s father. The bank statements from that year alone reveal transactions totaling tens of millions of dollars—more than enough to pay what the court ordered.

As Englanoff continues his efforts to recoup his money, two new lawsuits alleging Rechnitz’s involvement in fraudulent schemes were filed in the past nine months. The first, by Miami jeweler Leonard Sulaymanov against Mayweather, the rapper Tyga, and Mayweather’s Money Team, claimed that Rechnitz represented himself as Mayweather’s exclusive agent in a scheme to take watches and jewelry worth $4.15 million without paying a full or fair price. Though the lawsuit alleged that Mayweather posted images of himself wearing the jewelry on his social-media account, the jeweler claimed that he was never paid. (The case was voluntarily terminated in December 2024.)

The second suit, filed on behalf of a Miami digital artist named Jayson Winer, alleged that Rechnitz and his associates promised they could get Mayweather to use his close ties with billionaire Elon Musk to persuade the tech mogul to purchase Winer’s art and to reverse a shadow ban on his posts on X. (Rechnitz told Winer that Mayweather trained Musk for a much-hyped boxing match with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg that never materialized.) All it would cost, Rechnitz told Winer, according to the suit, was several million dollars.

As it happened, Winer worked at Platinum Partners in New York around the same time Rechnitz helped illegally transfer funds there from COBA. Despite Rechnitz’s reputation, Winer told me, he initially trusted him. If Rechnitz knew a boxing champ, why not a billionaire? Winer said that he only came to believe it was a scam when the duo kept asking for more money up front without connecting him with Musk. In his response, Rechnitz admitted that he’d told Winer that Mayweather could arrange a call with Musk about Winer’s collection for a price, but denied any wrongdoing. (Mayweather did not respond to requests for comment.)

Instead, Rechnitz filed a counterclaim arguing that Winer failed to pay for services rendered by Mayweather. “To feed his celebrity obsession, Winer promised funds he knew he did not have for the chance to make himself and his ‘art’ known to Musk,” the counterclaim alleged. It went on to say that Winer “launched a scorched-earth defamation campaign falsely accusing Counter-Plaintiff Jona Rechnitz of extorting him.” The suit is ongoing.

Chapter 4

Though it has been nine years since Rechnitz pled guilty in the New York COBA case, he has yet to serve any time in prison—even as his co-conspirators were given years. In July 2023, he successfully overturned his 2019 sentence of five months in that case when a court ruled that Judge Hellerstein should have recused himself because he had a close relationship with a witness in a related case. Sentencing was reassigned to Judge Katherine Polk Failla, who ruled in October 2024 that Rechnitz only owed the correctional officers’ union $891,000—some $9 million less than in the judgment handed down by Hellerstein. But Failla has yet to rule on how much prison time Rechnitz will serve; she delayed the hearing eight times over the course of two years. The next date is set for June 2025, though most believe that it, too, will be deferred.

 “Jona’s pretty much judgment-proof. He is the Jewish John Gotti,” said Andrew Smith, the lawyer representing the Miami jeweler who sold the watches to Mayweather and Tyga. “He gets charges brought against him. Then he turns out to be a confidential informant and he gets charges relaxed.”

The delays and inaction have led many to believe that Rechnitz may be protected by authorities. Several jewelers say Rechnitz claimed not only that he was a prolific government informant in New York—but that he was still working in that capacity.

Smith believes that the clearest indication that Rechnitz has some sort of influence with the government is that he has yet to be sentenced in the COBA case. “Jona robbed the New York City corrections officers pension fund. I mean, that’s as bad as stealing from the FBI, right?” said Smith. “You don’t get indicted, take a plea in 2016, and not get sentenced for nine years,” said Smith. “It doesn’t happen.”

The delays have incensed those who sued Rechnitz, many of whom wonder how he managed to escape prison time and further criminal indictments for years. “Rechnitz, a serial informant for the Justice Department, appears to believe that he can defraud victims with impunity, relying on his relationship with the Government to protect him from liability,” Winer’s January lawsuit read.

There have been at least 13 suits filed against Rechnitz or his companies since he moved to Los Angeles, but the courts have only ruled against him in two of them. Others were quietly settled. The EthereumMax class action has a trial date scheduled for January 2026. Englanoff lost his case against Mayweather last summer—the jury didn’t find sufficient evidence that Englanoff had entered into a contract with Mayweather’s production company. But a trial date against Rechnitz and other listed co-conspirators is set for July 2025.

For now Rechnitz remains free, and his alleged victims are left to commiserate with one another over a shared WhatsApp chat where they monitor what Rechnitz and Mayweather have been up to through social media and online articles and videos. The two met with injured Israeli Defense Force soldiers in Jerusalem last October; they were seen courtside at an L.A. Clippers game in early March; and Mayweather even thanked his “close friend” Rechnitz on a recent Fox Business appearance promoting a new line of workout supplements.

The FBI has not charged Rechnitz with any additional crimes. Some hope that will change soon. In January, Winer told me, two district attorneys flew to Miami to interview him about his lawsuit, with an FBI agent joining via Zoom. The Department of Justice then subpoenaed Winer to provide documents before a grand jury in Los Angeles at the end of February as part of a criminal investigation being conducted by the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Fraud Section, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The Atavist. But federal grand jury proceedings are secretive, and the government won’t comment on them—or even confirm their existence.

Several jewelers say Rechnitz claimed not only that he was a prolific government informant in New York—but that he was still working in that capacity.

“I cannot go on record,” Jona Rechnitz told me when I first spoke to him last summer. “I am a government witness, and I cannot be making public statements.” But, he added, he’d been thinking about talking anyway: “I did my homework on you. And because you’re an independent and you’re not controlled by anyone, that’s why I said, ‘You know what? Maybe I will actually take her call and respond to her.’ ”

We agreed to meet at Lamalo, a Kosher restaurant near Beverlywood. When I followed up by text the day before, he replied: “I think I have Covid! I’m getting tested if I’m ok then yes.” He texted later to say that, indeed, he was sick. We rescheduled for mid-August, only for Rechnitz to text me the weekend before that he was traveling and could no longer make it. We agreed to a time two weeks from then, but again he canceled. The fourth time we were supposed to meet, he texted me that morning, explaining that his flight had been canceled and it would have to wait until the following week. When I asked him for a new date, he didn’t respond.

I eventually did speak to Rechnitz face-to-face. After spending weeks at the small Santa Monica courthouse for the ongoing Pay Up JR lawsuit, I had all but abandoned hope that Rechnitz would ever appear. But as I sat amid the fold-down seats of the damp courtroom one foggy Monday morning, in he strode with his wife, Starbucks cup in hand. Rechnitz was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans, and black Vans. Rachel carried a plush Chanel bag. Englanoff followed shortly after, dressed in a suit, quiet and subdued. The Rechnitzes said little as their lawyer fought attempts by Englanoff’s team to force the release of more of Jadelle’s financial records.

I caught up to Rechnitz afterward and introduced myself. Towering over me, he smiled, as if we’d already met dozens of times. He waved off his worried lawyer, who cautioned him against speaking with me, and took me aside in the hallway. He asked me if Englanoff had said anything to me. I shrugged. “He won’t. He’s a tax cheat and has much too much to hide,” Rechnitz said. “Have you seen the videos about him? I’ll send you the link.” He promised me he’d be available following Yom Kippur; he had a lot to tell me. But after a few more days of fruitless texts, I lost hope of ever getting a sit-down interview. (While Rechnitz initially agreed to answer questions during the fact-check process for this story, he ignored a detailed list sent both by email and by text.)

The first time we spoke, last summer, Rechnitz did offer brief explanations for the more than a dozen lawsuits filed against him or Jadelle. The jewelry he had taken on memo from various jewelers back in 2019? He says his office was robbed. “That was a lot of merchandise, OK, but I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody, because it was an active police investigation, FBI investigation,” Rechnitz told me. But he didn’t clarify the alleged date of theft or provide proof that he’d filed a police report. (The Beverly Hills Police Department said that it had no record of any theft complaint by Rechnitz between December 2019 and August 2020. The FBI wouldn’t comment.)

Furthermore, he claimed he had proof of his innocence: The U.S. Attorney had called him a “victim” in a letter. But when I found the letter in question, written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Axelrad, it did not include the word victim. Instead, it read: “The United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California (‘USAO’) has informed you that, based on the USAO’s current investigation and information known as of this date, Jona Rechnitz is considered a witness in any investigation relating to Jadelle Jewelry.”

Before we ended our call, Rechnitz told me that my article was focusing on the wrong angle. “Your real story is how shady the diamond district is,” Rechnitz said. “They’re all bullshitters hiding behind beards and yarmulkes.”

---

© 2025 The Atavist Magazine. Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice for California Users.