He built a power Latin music label. Now, Rich Mendez faces another challenge: prison

Over a decade, Rich Mendez went from broke Orlando car salesman to Miami Latin music mogul.

Today, reggaetón stars Bad Bunny, Nicky Jam and Daddy Yankee drop by to record songs in his sprawling Wynwood entertainment complex and music studio. His own indie label’s artists are huge too: reggaetón darling Sech was nominated for three Latin Grammys, and performed his breakout song, “Otro Trago,” at the awards show in November.

“I’ve gone through the best 10 years of my life,” Mendez said. “And I’ve gone through the worst 10 years of my life.”

That’s because as he became a rising power in Miami’s Latin music industry while running Rich Music, Mendez was quietly fighting to stay out of prison for his role in a time-share scam from over a decade ago. He paid full restitution and cooperated with prosecutors — but couldn’t avoid a tough prison sentence meted out by a Texas federal judge.

So on Tuesday, Mendez, 49, will have to surrender to a Miami federal prison to start serving a five-year prison sentence.

While his sentence has no chance to be reduced on an appeal, there is some hope. President Donald Trump could pardon or commute his sentence. Mendez’s story has been championed by TV host John Cardillo, of the conservative cable network Newsmax, as an example of “rogue DOJ prosecutors destroying lives.”

But barring that, Mendez will have to run his label from behind bars. He’ll rely on his partner, son Josh Mendez, 31, and over 30 employees to grow the studios and stable of musicians in his absence.

“If the music’s good, everything else continues,” Mendez said. “I don’t see it affecting us.”

Born in New York of Puerto Rican descent, Mendez became a successful, if anonymous, used car salesman in Orlando.

But he lost his business in the economic crisis of 2008, just as his son was headed off to play football at Jacksonville University. He and his longtime wife, Dawn Mendez, got jobs as waiters before another business opportunity came along.

That business: selling time shares, a ubiquitous enterprise in Orlando, where salespeople lure out-of-towners into plunking down thousands to buy into vacation communities. Part of the industry involves telemarketers making deals for vacation properties by phone.

“What he didn’t know is the phone sales business is just so dirty,” said Philip Reizenstein, Mendez’s Miami attorney.

Mendez and another man ran an Orlando-area company called Resorts Condos Management.

“I made a mistake,” Mendez said. “I got into a business I didn’t know anything about.”

Federal prosecutors said that between early 2009 and late 2010, Mendez’s co-defendants made “unsolicited calls to owners of resort time-share properties,” convincing them to pay fees for the “bogus sales of their property.” The owners, thinking the sales were legit, would shell out thousands in alleged “closing costs.”

Mendez says he fired his sales staff when he discovered they were using “scripts” to lure people into paying money. He reopened, but when the shady conduct continued, Mendez closed shop.

“He shut down his business before the police were ever involved,” Reizenstein said.

His legal team says local state and federal prosecutors both passed on taking the case. But in 2015, a grand jury in Dallas indicted the case because one of the credit-card processing companies was based in Texas. At least eight people wound up indicted on allegations they stole millions.

Federal agents raided his Orlando home, the start of a long legal odyssey.

Mendez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and cooperated with investigators, paying over $300,000 in restitution. Still, Dallas Assistant U.S. Attorney Candida Heath insisted on up to 9 years in prison, and possibly even more.

“You can’t buy your way out of a sentence of incarceration based on the amount of restitution you pay,” Heath said at his July 8, 2019, sentencing hearing.

His other defense lawyer, former Dallas U.S. Attorney James Jacks, shot back: “I don’t really understand the aggressiveness — maybe is the word — of the government’s efforts to put him in prison for what I think would be an incredibly long period of time.”

U.S. Judge Sam Lindsay praised Mendez’s work employing people through his rising music business, but still imposed the five years because he wanted to avoid “unwarranted sentencing disparities” between him and the co-defendants who got similar sentences.

A U.S. Attorney’s spokeswoman, Erin Dooley, noted that Mendez pleaded guilty because he was faced with “overwhelming evidence” In a statement Friday, she added: “Sentencing was at the discretion of a U.S. District Judge. “

Mendez has been free on bond since July.

His defense attorneys won’t say what, if any, behind-the-scenes efforts have been made to grab the White House’s attention about Mendez’s case.

Trump, who has long raged against criminal investigations into his own conduct, hasn’t shied away from granting clemency.

Famously, Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who earned a criminal contempt charge while leading a high-profile and divisive crackdown on undocumented immigrants. In November, critics blasted Trump for issuing clemency to three military men convicted of war crimes.

Less controversially, Trump last year pardoned Ronen Nahmani, an Israeli-born ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who was convicted in South Florida in 2015 of selling synthetic marijuana. A federal judge had sentenced him to 20 years, and Nahmani got out after serving four years.

At the urging of celebrity Kim Kardashian West, the president also pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old grandmother who’d been locked up for life for cocaine trafficking.

Mendez’s plight has also been taken up by Bernie Kerik, the New York police commissioner who served more than three years in prison for federal tax fraud, and now serves as conservative commentator and advocate for justice reform.

“His case is a demonstration of why we need real criminal justice reform within the Department of Justice today,” Kerik said. “We take a guy like Rich Mendez out of the work force, destroy his life, destroy his family. It’s complete insanity.”

Ironically, Rich Music blossomed during the years the legal case was hanging over his head.

Although the label was created in 2007, the business languished until 2013, when the Mendezes signed a young reggaetón artist named Justin Quiles. He eventually blew up — his debut effort, “La Promesa,” debuted at No. 2 in Billboard’s top Latin albums in 2016. The following year, Quiles and Rich Music signed a deal with Warner Music Latina.

It’s been a whirlwind since then for artists from Rich Music, which was named Billboard’s ““Latin Rhythm Album Label of The Year” in 2017.

Dimelo Flow, a DJ and producer with Rich Music, signed a deal for an album with Interscope Records. Reggaetón artist Dalex released a series of popular singles. Billboard named Sech, a Panamanian-born reggaetón artist, as one of its stars to watch in 2019.

Sech’s hit single, “Otro Trago,” or “Another Drink,” with Darrell, surpassed 10 million plays. The honor is commemorated on a plaque above the door to the main recording studio at the Wynwood studio.

“That’s diamond. That’s ten times platinum,” Mendez said, while giving a recent tour of the facility. “Which is super, super special.”

From the outside, the Rich Music studios look like a bland warehouse on the outskirts of the Wynwood arts district.

But inside, the 6,500-square-foot facility was crafted for the millennial creative types. Josh Mendez brought in a slew of shipping containers, painting them bright colors, and arranging around a central courtyard to make individual offices — some for interns and social-media specialists, others for the executives and the stylists.

The recording studios look like the cockpits of a spaceship, bathed in pink and purple neon lights that can be brightened when the deep bass thump of a Sech song rumbles.

Next door, Mendez is converting an 8,000-square-foot warehouse into a sound stage to create podcasts, shoot music videos and film TV and movie shows — they recently purchased a production company to create content for streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Above the whir of the saws, passing piles of bricks and bags of cement in the cavernous building, Mendez beams.

“This will be the makeup area. Wardrobe — she’s got the biggest space,” Mendez said. “And the game room is in the next room.”

Sitting back in the studio, Mendez is unruffled by what’s to come. When he gets out, Mendez wants to work in the area of criminal-justice reform.

For now, he’ll report Tuesday to Miami’s Federal Correctional Institution, a low-security facility. He’s already been briefed on how to survive in prison, and make the most of rehabilitation programs.

“I want to get this part over with already,” he said.