All That Glitters

All That Glitters
His alleged victims say he bribed New York Police Department officials, stole millions in diamonds, and persuaded Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Kim Kardashian to shill for a scam cryptocurrency. So why is Jona Rechnitz still free?

By Miranda Green

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