Meet the Convicted Jewish Felon Who Scammed Floyd Mayweather

Floyd Mayweather claims Jona Rechnitz diverted tens of millions while awaiting a prison sentence he has avoided for nearly a decade.

May 26, 2026

Floyd Mayweather Jr., the undefeated boxing champion who retired with a perfect 50-0 professional record and earned over $1 billion in career purses, filed a bombshell lawsuit in May 2026 against his former investment manager Jona Rechnitz, alleging a multi-year scheme to divert approximately $175 million from his accounts. The case has placed renewed scrutiny on Rechnitz, a convicted felon and former federal cooperating witness with documented connections to Orthodox Jewish political and charitable networks.

Mayweather’s complaint, filed in New York state court by attorney Leo Jacobs, names Rechnitz, associate Ayal Frist, Frist Apex Ventures—a Florida-based real estate and investment firm—and Manhattan attorney Alexander Seligson as defendants. The core allegation is that Rechnitz, who began cultivating Mayweather’s trust around 2017 and by 2024 had embedded himself as his investment manager, real estate adviser, and banking liaison, systematically redirected funds to accounts tied to himself and Frist. Mayweather alleges he did not know at the time that Rechnitz had previously pleaded guilty in federal court to honest-services wire-fraud conspiracy, or that a civil judgment in excess of $17.7 million had been entered against Rechnitz in a separate case.

Mayweather alleges that a $7.5 million wire on July 1, 2024 for a 12-month investment to Frist Apex Ventures produced no investment and the money was never returned. The complaint further alleges that $15 million in real estate settlement proceeds were diverted to Frist Apex at Rechnitz’s direction without Mayweather’s authorization— with Seligson allegedly verbally admitting to causing that transfer— that over $8.8 million of a $16.4 million loan on four of Mayweather’s properties was sent to Frist Apex with only $2.5 million reaching Mayweather Promotions, and that $2.1 million of an $8.2 million refinance of a Las Vegas property was directed to Frist Apex without authorization.

The lawsuit also details smaller but equally brazen diversions. Rechnitz allegedly diverted a $1 million deposit Mayweather agreed to pay on a New York property, sending it to a New York jeweler instead, causing the property deal to collapse. Nearly $100 million in Mayweather’s jewelry was allegedly pledged to 2 Miami jewelers for only $13 million, with a substantial portion of the jewelry still in the jewelers’ possession. Mayweather also claims he signed a bill of sale for his Gulfstream jet at Rechnitz’s suggestion with the buyer’s name left blank, and he does not know who purchased the aircraft or where the proceeds went.

Rechnitz’s attorney Morris Missry pushed back forcefully, calling the claims “utterly baseless and refuted by substantial documentary evidence including Mr. Mayweather’s own correspondence.” The defense also threatened to expose Mayweather’s own financial issues, stating that “Mr. Mayweather’s gambling issues, prolific spending habits, monies owed to third party creditors and IRS tax liens and levys, as well as other unseemly behavior will be exposed.”

The relationship between the two men dates back several years. Rechnitz first approached Mayweather at a basketball game, presenting himself as a celebrity jeweler and courtside regular. By 2021, Rechnitz was considered part of the “Money Team”, Mayweather’s entourage, wearing black T-shirts and TMT baseball caps. The relationship deepened through the Mayweather vs. Logan Paul exhibition fight in June 2021, in which Rechnitz organized ticket sales and introduced the EthereumMax cryptocurrency promotion. As recently as May 2025, Mayweather had publicly defended Rechnitz, stating he trusted him.

Long before he entered Mayweather’s orbit, Rechnitz had grown up in a world far removed from boxing. Jona Rechnitz was born into a wealthy, politically connected Orthodox Jewish family based in Los Angeles, California. He attended Yavneh Hebrew Academy, a prestigious private Jewish school, and graduated from Yeshiva University Los Angeles High School in the same class as conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. He later attended Yeshiva University in New York.

His family represents a broader web of Orthodox Jewish political power. His father Robert Rechnitz served as former chair of the West Coast region of American Friends of Likud, the U.S. nonprofit that promotes Benjamin Netanyahu’s political party. Robert also chaired the Iron Dome Congressional Tribute held at the U.S. Senate on February 27, 2013, and served as national finance co-chair for Senator Lindsey Graham’s 2016 presidential campaign. His cousin Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz is an ultra-Orthodox philanthropist who operates a large nursing home network in California and was identified by the Forward as one of the largest donors to Netanyahu’s reelection campaign in December 2014.

Rechnitz began his career at the U.S. branch of Africa Israel Investments, the international real estate empire owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev—the so-called “King of Diamonds”—where Rechnitz rose to Director of Acquisitions. He then founded his own real estate firm, JSR Capital, and settled on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

His entire business and social infrastructure was built on Orthodox Jewish community networks. In New York, he partnered with Jeremiah Reichberg, a liaison between the NYPD and the Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. His diamond dealer relationships in Los Angeles were largely within the tight-knit Orthodox diamond industry.

The defining scandal of Rechnitz’s career is the NYPD corruption case. From approximately 2008 to 2016, Rechnitz and Reichberg ran a systematic bribery operation targeting senior NYPD officials. The scheme involved chartering private jets to fly police officials to Las Vegas for a Super Bowl watch party in February 2013—the $60,000 jet included a prostitute as entertainment—paying hotel costs for police officers’ family vacations to Rome, buying expensive watches, and funding home renovations. They arranged for an NYPD counterterrorism squad to provide security for a midtown synagogue following the 2015 Paris attacks outside proper authorization channels. They also arranged for police to shut down part of the Lincoln Tunnel for Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev. In exchange, the officials provided gun license processing favors, parking perks, security details, and general influence within the department.

In 2016, Rechnitz pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. He became a cooperating government witness whose testimony prosecutors described as “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.”

His testimony led to multiple convictions. Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, was convicted on bribery charges after Rechnitz delivered $60,000 in cash inside a Ferragamo handbag in exchange for Seabrook directing $20 million in union pension money into hedge fund Platinum Partners. Murray Huberfeld, founder of Platinum Partners, was sentenced to 30 months. Jeremy Reichberg was convicted on bribery and related charges and sentenced to 4 years.

Simultaneously, Rechnitz was a major fundraiser for NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2013 campaign. He testified that he and Reichberg raised over $100,000 for de Blasio’s favorite causes expecting political favors in return. Rechnitz also admitted to doctoring emails from Mayor de Blasio and forwarding them to friends to exaggerate his own importance and influence.

At his December 2019 sentencing, Judge Alvin Hellerstein sentenced Rechnitz to 5 months in prison and 5 months of house arrest, far less than the 20 years he faced, and ordered him to repay up to $10 million to the COBA union. He did not serve a single day in prison for nearly a decade after his 2016 guilty plea. By March 2026, he was re-sentenced to the same 5-month term with a surrender date of May 8, 2026, but has been fighting even that sentence.

After relocating to Los Angeles, Rechnitz’s luxury jewelry business Jadelle faced at least 13 lawsuits from jewelers and creditors. Jewelers Peter Voutsas and Ira Rovinsky filed a joint suit claiming Rechnitz had stolen jewelry worth $7 million that had been consigned to them, pawning it for a fraction of its value. Real estate investor Victor Noval alleged Rechnitz borrowed $2.9 million using diamonds as collateral—diamonds that were allegedly not his to pledge—and then issued checks that bounced. Jeweler Oved Anter, who had consigned $2.8 million in jewelry to Jadelle, alleged fraud in a separate suit, describing Rechnitz’s operations as “one of Jona Rechnitz’s blazing trail of Ponzi scheme frauds.” The FBI investigated the alleged theft or taking by fraud of millions of dollars in diamonds while on consignment with Jadelle, per a U.S. attorney filing.

In 2021, Rechnitz played a central role in the promotion of EthereumMax, a cryptocurrency alleged to be a pump-and-dump scheme. According to a class action lawsuit, Rechnitz provided EthereumMax insiders access to high-profile celebrities willing to promote the token in exchange for payments, allegedly making hundreds of thousands of dollars by liquidating his EMAX tokens when he knew celebrity promotions would temporarily inflate the price. One confidential witness in the lawsuit alleged that Rechnitz “confirmed to CW1 that EthereumMax was a scam.” Celebrity co-promoters included Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, and Paul Pierce.

Separate from EthereumMax, Rechnitz allegedly organized a ticket resale scheme around the Mayweather vs. Logan Paul fight in June 2021 and subsequent boxing events. Rechnitz solicited a $1.4 million investment from neighbor and landlord Joe Englanoff, promising up to 10x returns from ticket markups, then repeatedly delayed payment and reinvested without authorization into successive fights. In a striking detail documented by the Atavist, Robert Rechnitz placed his hand on a Torah scroll to personally guarantee payment—which never came. Englanoff filed a 2022 lawsuit against both Rechnitz and Mayweather for $15 million in breach of contract.

The Mayweather lawsuit against Rechnitz is the latest in a decade long pattern. Rechnitz has faced lawsuits from jewelers, real estate investors, boxing event organizers, and now Mayweather himself, all alleging similar schemes of gaining trust, redirecting funds, and failing to pay back victims. Despite pleading guilty in 2016, being sentenced in 2019, and re-sentenced in March 2026, he has still not begun serving his sentence.

This uncanny legal immunity underscores the formidable institutional protections that shield figures embedded in Jewish networks. Mayweather spent a lifetime mastering the art of the bob and weave, yet he proved utterly defenseless when faced with the machinations of a Jewish schemer like Jona Rechnitz. Despite his vocal support for Israel and attempts to curry favor with the Jewish establishment, Mayweather found that in this high-stakes game, the house always wins and the age-old axiom holds true: with Jews, you lose.

José Niño Unfiltered

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