'Ruined': Victims of Bergen influencer's alleged real estate scheme speak out

By all accounts, Cesar Pina seemed like a trustworthy and reputable guy. He and his wife, Jennifer, became well-known real estate influencers with over 300,000 followers and a partnership with RaaShaun Casey, better known as DJ Envy.

His accusers said he was granted legitimacy because Casey was his business partner.

The Pinas and their companies have been embroiled in a number of lawsuits since the spring, with the plaintiffs accusing them of defrauding them out of thousands if not millions of dollars.

On top of the lawsuits, Cesar Pina was arrested on Oct. 18 and is accused by the U.S. attorney for New Jersey of running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi-like scheme.

The Pinas themselves have filed a lawsuit against a consumer lending company, Pride Funding LLC. In the filing on Oct. 18, the Pinas and their LLCs say Pride Funding participated in predatory loan practices. Also included in a number of lawsuits is DJ Envy, a radio host with the popular radio show "The Breakfast Club."

Cesar Pina's civil attorney, Steven Griegel, did not respond to emails or calls for comment. Casey has denied knowledge of the scheme, NPR reported.

Other claims include failing to provide loan information when it was requested, providing false payoffs and refusing to give proper payoffs upon request, charging improper and illegal interest, and violating several laws.

Stanley Acosta, Derik Deangelo, Nigel Chamblin and Anthony Barone are among the many people who have filed lawsuits against the Pinas and Casey. All say they wouldn't have known about Pina had they not heard about him through Casey's radio show.

Acosta, Deangelo and Chamblin said there was constant promotion of Pina and his real estate investment opportunities.

'I went against better judgment'

Acosta said he went to one of the real estate seminars in December 2021 at the Javits Center before a friend who had invested with Pina introduced him and several others.

"I thought that [Pina] was legit," Acosta said.

He described the first meeting with Pina as "weird." Acosta said he didn't like the contract he was given, so he had his lawyer review it and rewrite it in his best interest for a property at 413 Ninth Ave. in Paterson.

When he went to meet with the real estate influencer again, Acosta said, the man's request that he bring $150,000 in cash should have been a red flag, but he didn't question it because he had been saving up the cash and it was easier to deal with.

"I went against better judgment and continued with the deal," Acosta said, noting that Pina didn't even count the $150,000 he brought him.

Acosta said he also found it strange that he took the contract to a different room to be notarized when both he and Pina should have signed it before the notary.

Pina asked him if he had any more money to invest and described being interested in cryptocurrencies, NFTs and becoming a hard money lender.

Acosta said he hadn't heard anything from Pina for several months and contacted him when the maturation of his contract rolled around. Over a month after the deadline, Acosta said, Pina told him things were backed up, and it was December when he said he began reaching out more aggressively.

Pina asked him for his bank information so he could wire him the money, but the funds never materialized.

Acosta said the decision to invest with Cesar Pina caused his life to fall apart. He and his wife are in the middle of a divorce. He had to move out of his house, has thousands in credit card debt, has had to borrow money from friends, and is worried about his 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

He said that at the time, his wife didn't know he had taken their life savings and invested it, noting that part of the money came from wedding gifts.

"I'm completely ruined," Acosta said. "I don't have a dollar to my name. I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I'm behind on all my credit cards."

The history of the fraud claims

Like Acosta, Deangelo was introduced to Pina through "The Breakfast Club." He began following him on Instagram, asking him basic real estate questions before seeing if he had any deals available.

Pina told Deangelo, who is from Boston, to come down to New Jersey and said they would go over opportunities he had.

Many of the lawsuits said the people who provided the Pinas with money for these investments reported having been promised up to 20% to 45% returns within five months. Deangelo was offered two deals, one for $200,000 and the other for $100,000 that he declined.

Pina sent Deangelo a picture about a TV series on A&E being produced by 50 Cent with him and DJ Envy, leading Deangelo to trust that the offer was legitimate. He said he even did a Google search to see whether the pair had scammed anyone previously, and the search turned up nothing.

"I was like, what the hell, this guy's official, he has a show coming out," Deangelo said. "I saw it on Yahoo, he's like the number one real estate mogul."

He got back in touch and asked what smaller deals were available and decided on investing $100,000 with the promise of getting the investment returned with an additional $30,000 within four months.

"He was like a good car salesman," Deangelo said, adding that Cesar Pina told him these were exclusive deals he did only two or three times a year.

Deangelo said he left him alone and didn't make contact until his contract was getting ready to expire in February 2023, but Pina's father had just died.

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Deangelo said each time he reached Pina, he was given more excuses, until he was told they had finally closed on the house and that he come down to New Jersey to pick up his check. Deangelo said he and his then-girlfriend drove down to Fort Lee to meet with the influencer at 3 p.m., but he was nowhere to be found.

Pina told him he was going to be a little late and after more time that he would be several hours late. Deangelo said Pina was finally able to see them, but he got "weird vibes" from the office. He said the office was one room, blacked out, and looked like it was in the middle of a demolition.

Deangelo said Pina pulled out two checks and a wad of cash, which he counted and put away again before handing the checks to Deangelo.

Two days after he deposited the checks, the money was removed from his account, with his bank telling him there had been insufficient funds and the checks bounced. When Deangelo called Pina, he was told the money was taking a bit longer to clear but that Pina would call and have his bank redeposit the checks into Deangelo's account.

Deangelo said it didn't make sense to him, so he inquired with his bank. He was told it wasn't possible for Pina's bank to redeposit the checks. Eventually, Pina stopped responding to texts and calls from Deangelo.

In order to invest in what Pina was offering, Deangelo said, he took out a home equity line of credit on his house and ended up having to sell his car rental business and all the vehicles to try to recoup his losses.

"I have to kind of work and not focus on trying to build a business," Deangelo said. "It kind of set me back."

The four men never saw a dime

Chamblin invested $835,000 among three houses, in Paterson, Hawthorne and Maplewood. He said the Paterson property, at 147 Manchester Ave., was also offered to more than 10 other people.

Chamblin said he became interested in the alleged scheme after it was heavily promoted during "The Breakfast Club" and eventually attended an August 2022 real estate conference in Atlanta where he met Pina.

He kept in touch with Pina and said the influencer asked if he was still in contact with some "high net worth" individuals, because he wanted to start a hard money fund.

Chamblin said he and his mentor had meetings with Pina and one where Casey was present, with Pina requesting $100 million. Chamblin said his mentor was willing to pay but changed his mind, saying his mentor told him Pina wanted "too much control" over his money.

After his mentor backed out, Chamblin said, he still was interested in working with Pina, which was when he decided to help flip houses.

"I thought it was a good idea at the time," Chamblin said, noting he has been in real estate for 22 years. "I know better than to send people money without an attorney, an escrow account, without having my name on an LLC."

He said he pushed that to the side because he didn't think Pina would fleece him for $835,000 when they had previously been talking about a $100 million deal. He said Pina sold him a "bill of goods," which was "seemingly, at the time, not out of the realm of possibility."

He said the association with iHeartMedia, DJ Envy and various celebrities gave an air of legitimacy.

"They're purporting to be legitimate and they're not," Chamblin said. "I would have never invested had it not been for DJ Envy on the airwaves promoting him fully. Cesar was an unknown."

Chamblin said the alleged scam put a wrench in his being able to help his daughters financially but also hurt his business.

He said that instead of being closer to the finish line and being able to retire, he was pushed back a few years.

Barone said that in mid-2018, he started hearing DJ Envy talk about real estate and Cesar Pina and noticing he was linked in DJ Envy's Instagram account. Barone said he ended up going to a seminar in Paterson and was impressed with the guests at other seminars they were having, such as attorneys and licensed accountants.

He said he contacted mutual friends with DJ Envy and some other people to set up a lunch to discuss investment opportunities, including expanding to larger projects like apartment buildings, including the Taylor Court Apartments, in which Barone ended up investing.

Barone said that when he spoke with DJ Envy, he wanted to know who else was investing with him and that DJ Envy told him that was Pina's side of the business.

According to Barone, he was asked for $1 million but chose to invest $500,000 for a 12.5% stake. He said Pina told him there were construction delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Barone said that in late 2021, Pina told him construction had begun and would continue straight through 2022.

Barone said he wasn't in a real rush to have the project completed because he had a number of things going on. He said he eventually started to get antsy and saw people talking on Instagram about the Pinas running a Ponzi scheme. Barone said the Pinas assured him it wasn't anything and that someone was just trying to tear them down and was posting stuff for engagement.

To Barone, the claims of fraud began to look more legitimate because of evidence other accusers were talking about. He said he eventually got Cesar Pina on the phone, accusing him of scamming people since 2015. He said that was the last time he spoke to Pina.

All four men said they have not gotten back a dime of what they gave to Cesar Pina.

Alexander Schachtel, the attorney for a number of people suing the Pinas and DJ Envy, including Acosta, Deangelo and Chamblin, said Cesar Pina had multiple people invest in the same properties, providing the same promises to them as to his clients.

Schachtel said he knows that at least 10 to 15 other people had contracts for one home in Paterson.

"You can't put 15 people on one property. That's fraud," Deangelo said. "It's not like I invested into something, the market went down and it was just a bad investment."

Who is Cesar Pina?

On his flipping_nj Instagram page, Cesar Pina said his family's experience as tenants and a discussion with their landlord made him want to go into real estate. He said the landlord sold off the property and showed his father that over the 10 years they were there, his rent helped pay off the landlord's property.

"And at that moment, that's when the light bulb went off in my head," Pina said in the video. "Real estate is the way to go. I want to be in a business where I'm going to charge people rent and end up paying off my property and then I could sell the property off in the future for a profit or for cash flow every month."

The flipping_nj Instagram page is littered with videos of Pina giving advice on real estate investing and showing off properties in multiple states, tidbits from his real estate seminars and inspirational words.

According to Pina's videos, he and his wife managed over 1,600 properties across the country and struggled to buy their first real estate properties. An Instagram post from November 2021 said he previously was prison and that they pawned Jennifer Pina's wedding ring to close their first real estate deals.

"I can tell you that only by going through the struggles is that we find our greatness," the post said.

Pina details his early life in his book "Flipping Keys," which came out in March 2021.

On the day of his arrest last month, he posted a photo that said, "Every negative is a positive. The bad things that happened to me, I somehow make them good. That means you can't do anything to hurt me."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Cesar Pina lawsuit plaintiffs speak out about Bergen influencer