Cardis International, a Long Island based credit card company, got investors to fork over $70 million by lying about their affiliation with Jay Z and Roc Nation.
According to the investors who are suing the company for fraud, Cardis told them they had been hired by Roc Nation for bill processing. However, that was not true.
Dvora Weinstein, one of the investors, says that Aaron Fischman, Cardis’ co-founder, convinced her to invest using his Bernie Madoff-style reverse psychology. She says he lured her into investing $300,000 by saying that he didn’t need her money but would make “a generous exception” for her to invest. At the time Cardis was more than $3 million in debt.
Ben Brafman, a high profile lawyer who is currently representing Martin Shkreli, and Charles Alpert, heir to the Alpert family’s textile and real-estate fortune, are also investors who were conned by the Cardis Ponzi scheme.
Briant Biggs, Roc Nation’s head of global mobile strategies, sits on the advisory board of Cardis International, according to the company’s website. However, according to the NY Post, he denies Cardis was hired to handle bill processing for them, despite what they told investors in emails.
