50 Cent got taken for big bucks by an employee who secretly pocketed millions from the rapper’s champagne and cognac biz, according to court papers.
The Queens-born rapper, whose given name is Curtis Jackson, launched his Branson Cognac in 2018 and Le Chemin du Roi, or The King’s Path, champagne in 2019, through his company, Sire Spirits.
The booze doesn’t come cheap, with the cognac selling for $200 and up and the bubbly going for $150 or more.
But the company’s director of Brand Management, Mitchell Green, was jacking up prices and getting kickbacks from wholesalers to the tune of $2.2 million in so-called “agency fees,” according to Manhattan Federal Court records.
Green only confessed to the scheme in February 2020, “after two years of embezzling from Sire Spirits,” because he was being extorted by someone who threatened to expose him. The company fired him and took him to arbitration.
An arbitrator found Green liable for the money he pocketed, along with another $948,096 paid to a wholesaler, and ordered him to pay another $2.7 million in attorneys’ fees, costs and damages for a whopping total of $6.2 million, court records show.
A Manhattan judge confirmed the arbitrator’s decision in June. Attorneys for Green did not respond to a message seeking comment.
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