A man who posed as a deal-making billionaire rabbi astrologer and allegedly made a phony $290 million bid for Lord & Taylor pleaded guilty in New York to a fraud that drove his two victims into bankruptcy.
(Bloomberg) — A man who posed as a deal-making billionaire rabbi astrologer and allegedly made a phony $290 million bid for Lord & Taylor pleaded guilty in New York to a fraud that drove his two victims into bankruptcy.
Russell Dwayne Lewis, 57, told a series of “increasingly outrageous and damaging lies” to defraud friends and employees, culminating in a farcical attempt to buy the storied retailer with non-existent assets, according to prosecutors. On Tuesday, Lewis pleaded guilty in federal court to identity theft and to defrauding a close friend and a widow with four children out of $3.8 million.
“The simple answer is poor judgment on my part,” Lewis said when asked by US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain why he stole the money, using the stolen identity “Clifford Ari Getz.”
“I did it all for personal gain and I used the money for personal expenses,” Lewis said.
Lewis faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each of two fraud counts and two additional years for identity theft. Federal sentencing guidelines call for him to get as much as 8 1/2 years behind bars. He’s agreed to forfeit the $3.8 million he stole.
According to prosecutors, Lewis told victims he operated a secretive family investment firm, Neviim Equity, out of offices in Beverly Hills, California. The government claimed he stole the identity of a man named Clifford Getz, used the Social Security number of a 13-year-old boy in Ohio, forged a passport and posed as a rabbi. He boasted that he was worth $10 billion, $18 billion and even $30 billion, depending on whom he was talking to.
CIA Claim
Lewis claimed to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Secret Service and the Los Angeles Police Department, prosecutors said. He claimed he used his knowledge of astrology to help pick the jury for the 1995 O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, according to the government. The defrauded widow initially came to him for his claimed astrological expertise.
At the hearing in Manhattan federal court, Lewis told the judge he is actually a high school graduate with a felony record. Lewis said he’s worked in sales, as a fitness trainer and in the automotive field.
Lewis also had been charged in connection with his allegedly phony bid in bankruptcy court to acquire Lord and Taylor, the nearly 200-year-old retailer that folded in 2020. The Lord & Taylor deal was never closed and Lewis made no money from it. Under an agreement with prosecutors, that charge will be dropped.
When Lewis made the bid for the retailer, it was well above what the Lord & Taylor team expected. Lord & Taylor, its lawyers, bankers and other advisers spent much of August 2020 in calls with Getz and his people, doing due diligence and trying to figure out if the deal was workable.
During one call with the bankrupt retailer’s representatives, Lewis claimed to have a PhD in theoretical mathematics, as well as master’s degrees in neurophysics, genetics and quantum physics. Lord & Taylor’s representatives wasted thousands of dollars and weeks of time evaluating the proposed deal, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say that Getz sent a forged letter from a foreign bank claiming that it held hundreds of millions of euros belonging to him.
In the end, an investment firm, Saadia Group, agreed to pay just $12 million for Lord & Taylor’s intellectual property and e-commerce assets.
The case is USA v. Lewis, 22-mj-06717, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.