Floyd Mayweather Jr. has filed a sweeping lawsuit against his former investment manager and real estate adviser, Jona Rechnitz, alleging a multi-year fraudulent scheme that siphoned no less than $175 million from his business empire. The complaint, filed May 21 in New York Supreme Court, paints a picture of a trusted confidant who allegedly exploited the boxing champion’s lack of formal financial training to divert cash, real estate equity, a private jet, and millions in diamond jewelry into accounts he and his associates controlled.
The lawsuit names Rechnitz alongside associates Ayal Frist, Frist Apex Ventures, LLC, and New York attorney Alexander Seligson, accusing them of orchestrating a complex web of unauthorized transactions. The complaint was filed by the law firm Jacobs P.C. on behalf of Mayweather individually and through seven of his business entities, including Mayweather Promotions, LLC, TBE Aviation, LLC, and three New York real estate holding companies collectively known as the Vada Properties.
According to the complaint, Rechnitz was introduced to Mayweather around 2017 and spent years cultivating a personal and business relationship, representing himself as a sophisticated real estate investor. By 2023 and increasingly through 2024, he had assumed the de facto role of Mayweather’s investment manager, real estate adviser, and banking liaison. In that capacity, the complaint alleges, Rechnitz directed which counterparties Mayweather’s entities were to pay and when, inserted himself into Mayweather’s personal staffing, banking, and jet operations, and caused the formation of single-purpose Nevada limited liability companies tied to Mayweather’s residences, with attorney Seligson installed as managing agent. Mayweather, who has no formal post-secondary education and no training in finance, accounting, real estate, or commercial law, reposed his confidence in Rechnitz throughout, the complaint says.
The alleged diversions are extensive. On July 1, 2024, Mayweather Promotions wired $7.5 million to Frist Apex Ventures at JPMorgan Chase Bank under the notation “12 MONTH INVESTMENT.” Rechnitz represented to Mayweather that the funds would be placed in an investment vehicle generating a return. According to the complaint, no investment was ever made, no return was paid, and the principal has not been returned. That same summer, Rechnitz orchestrated a $13 million financing from Hankey Capital, LLC secured by Mayweather’s Miami Beach property. Of those loan proceeds, $6.5 million was disbursed to purchase a 1996 Gulfstream G-IV aircraft, while only approximately $4 million was made available to Mayweather Promotions. In October 2024, a follow-on $16.4 million cross-collateralized loan closed with Hankey Capital, and on the same day it funded, $8.8 million of the proceeds was wired directly to Frist Apex while only $2.5 million reached Mayweather Promotions.
The complaint also details the alleged manipulation of Mayweather’s New York real estate dealings. In November 2024, Mayweather’s entity Vada Properties I NYC, LLC entered into a contract to acquire a 5 percent membership interest in a Manhattan affordable housing portfolio from Black Spruce Development LLC. The agreement contained an express no-assignment provision, yet the complaint alleges Rechnitz caused 20 percent of all distributions from the portfolio to be continuously routed to Frist Apex in direct breach of that clause. In a January 1, 2026 email to the portfolio’s management company, Rechnitz himself directed that 20 percent of distributions go to “Frist Apex Ventures — the usual account at Chase you’ve been sending all distribution to per my direction.”
In December 2024, Mayweather signed letters of intent to purchase a Manhattan building at 1196 Sixth Avenue for $27 million. A $1 million nonrefundable deposit was paid, then diverted at Rechnitz’s direction to Pristine Jewelers NY Inc. The acquisition never closed and no funds were returned. Approximately $15 million in settlement proceeds tied to claims involving SL Green Realty Corp. were also allegedly transferred to Frist Apex without Mayweather’s authorization. Seligson has admitted to Mayweather by phone that he caused both that transfer and a separate disbursement of $2.1 million in refinance proceeds from Mayweather’s Las Vegas property to Frist Apex, both at Rechnitz’s direction and without Mayweather’s knowledge.
In August 2025, jewelry with an asserted value of approximately $100 million was placed with two Miami dealers in exchange for roughly $13 million in payments, less than 14 percent of the stated value. A substantial portion of the jewelry remains in those dealers’ possession. The complaint includes a text exchange in which one dealer threatened to begin liquidating the merchandise; Rechnitz responded, “Agreed thx,” despite having no authority from Mayweather to do so. In November 2025, Mayweather was allegedly directed to sign an FAA Aircraft Bill of Sale for his Gulfstream G-IV with the purchaser block left blank and the stated consideration listed as “$1.00 & OVC.” Mayweather says he does not know who acquired the aircraft or where the proceeds went, though the complaint alleges they were applied to a Bugatti-related obligation and otherwise diverted to Frist Apex.
The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a long legal history for Rechnitz. He pleaded guilty in 2016 in the Southern District of New York to honest-services wire fraud conspiracy in connection with a massive NYPD bribery scandal. Prosecutors described him as having bribed high-ranking police officials and Norman Seabrook, then-president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, with luxury trips, Super Bowl tickets, and cash in exchange for favors. Most notoriously, Rechnitz stuffed $60,000 in cash into a Ferragamo bag and hand-delivered it to Seabrook in an idling SUV, an exchange federal agents were watching in real time. He also helped steer $20 million of the union’s pension money into Platinum Partners, a hedge fund prosecutors later described as operating like a Ponzi scheme. Despite the gravity of those offenses, Rechnitz received a sentence of just five months in prison and five months of house arrest, after prosecutors called him “one of the single most important and prolific white-collar cooperating witnesses in the recent history of the Southern District of New York.” His cooperation implicated the inner circle of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, who later publicly disavowed him as “a liar and a felon.”
After his conviction, Rechnitz relocated to Beverly Hills and launched Jadelle Jewelry and Diamonds, cultivating a celebrity clientele that included Kim Kardashian. The venture quickly became mired in litigation. Los Angeles businessman Victor Noval filed suit alleging that Rechnitz had borrowed nearly $6 million secured by diamonds and a Bugatti, then issued two bounced checks and disappeared with both the collateral and the cash. A federal judge later ruled that Sotheby’s could be liable for allowing an unauthorized party to walk out with approximately $4 million in yellow diamonds connected to Rechnitz. Noval ultimately won a civil judgment of $17.7 million plus interest in 2023, which is currently being enforced via charging orders. Rechnitz was also named as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit over EthereumMax, a cryptocurrency promoted in 2021 by Kardashian, Mayweather, and NBA player Paul Pierce. Investors alleged the defendants artificially inflated the price of the token before it collapsed, and a cooperating witness claimed Rechnitz had privately confirmed the project was a scam.
It was against this backdrop that Rechnitz cultivated his relationship with Mayweather, a relationship the complaint says Mayweather entered into without any knowledge of Rechnitz’s guilty plea, his cooperation with federal authorities, or the civil fraud judgment against him. Plaintiffs are asserting seven causes of action, including fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, and unjust enrichment, and are seeking compensatory damages of no less than $175 million, punitive damages, a full accounting of all diverted assets, and the imposition of a constructive trust over the funds and property held by Frist Apex Ventures. Rechnitz and the other defendants have not yet publicly responded to the allegations.
