50 Cent gets a green light to seize a former employee's home, then gets back to mocking Diddy
The rapper's company Sire Spirits got the OK last week from a federal judge to seize the Connecticut home of former Sire executive Mitchell Green as partial payment toward a $7-million debt after a federal bankruptcy judge lifted an automatic stay that had prevented transfer of the property.
That took 50 Cent — real name Curtis Jackson III — and his legal team a little more than four years to accomplish, from when Green confessed to embezzling from his employer via a kickback scheme involving wholesalers until last week when the stay came off the house.
Branson Cognac and Chemin du Roi Champagne, both owned by Jackson, are managed through Sire Spirits. Green admitted in February 2020 that he had been raising prices and getting kickbacks from wholesalers that were labeled 'agency fees,' the New York Post reported in 2022 and 2023.
Sire Spirits filed a request with the U.S. District Court, New York Southern, on Sept. 1, 2021, for confirmation of an arbitration agreement of a little less than $3.5 million in damages, according to court documents reviewed by The Times.
Green had been embezzling from 2018 into 2020, when someone attempted to blackmail him over the $2.2 million in kickbacks, according to AllHipHop. At that point, Green told his employer what he'd done. Sire Spirits fired him and went into arbitration, which was settled in Sire's favor. With attorney fees and legal costs rolled in, the November 2022 final judgment totaled around $6.3 million.
In March 2023, the disgraced businessman filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, which was still going on when Sire Spirits' legal team secured a judgment lien against Green's home in Westport, Conn., according to the court documents.
Green's legal team had been providing court-ordered updates on the status of the property, always stating that Green was still in bankruptcy proceedings and therefore still had that automatic stay protecting his home. But last week, Sire's attorneys asked the bankruptcy judge to get rid of the stay, saying that Green had no equity in the home due to the size of the judgment against him and therefore the property didn't need to be part of his liquidation.
The judge agreed and lifted the stay.
The Connecticut home was appraised in late April at $1 million. That value will ultimately be credited against the judgment plus pre- and post-judgment interest, which now totals around $7 million.
Although Jackson has mentioned Branson Cognac recently on social media, he hasn't said anything about the legal victory. In the last week, the rapper has been enjoying himself by poking fun at Sean 'Diddy' Combs, a.k.a. 'Puffy,' who is mired in a federal sex trafficking and conspiracy trial, where prosecution witnesses have been testifying.
'Cut, CUT ... Wait a minute PUFFY's got a gun, I can't believe this I don't feel safe ... LOL,' Jackson wrote Tuesday on social media, posting screen shots of new testimony from Combs' former assistant Capricorn Clark. Clark told the court that Combs said something about guns that she took as him making a threat against Jackson.
'Oh my goodness itty bitty Diddy wants me Dead,' the entrepreneur and provocateur said in a follow-up post. 'I have to lay low, I think I'm gonna hide out at the playoff game tonight LOL.' He posted a comical picture of himself looking completely freaked out.
The New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers should be tipping off right about now.
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