Josh Gotlib’s Black Spruce Management is caught in the course of a legal bloodbath between Floyd Mayweather and his former trusted adviser, Jona Rechnitz.
Mayweather’s Vada Properties invested in Black Spruce’s Manhattan rental portfolio in 2024 and 2025. However the agency claims it can not pay any distributions from the portfolio to Mayweather due to Mayweather’s ongoing lawsuit towards Rechnitz, wherein the previous star boxer accuses Rechnitz of fraud.
Black Spruce this week requested a New York state court docket decide to find out if a court docket can maintain the distributions because the case is being litigated.
Rechnitz, his associate Ayal Frist and Frist’s firm Frist Apex Ventures declare they’re entitled to twenty p.c of the distributions from the rental portfolio, in response to the court docket filings.
“If Black Spruce pays one hundred pc of the distributions to Mayweather and Vada Properties, it faces claims from Rechnitz, Frist, and Frist Apex asserting entitlement to twenty p.c of the distributions,” Avi Schick, an legal professional for Black Spruce, stated in a Sep. 8 submitting. “If Black Spruce pays 20 p.c of the distributions to Rechnitz, Frist or Frist Apex, it faces claims from Mayweather and Vada Properties for distributing funds to an unauthorized recipient.”
“The distributions belong to our shopper, Floyd Mayweather,” legal professional Leo Jacobs stated in a press release.
Black Spruce’s authorized filings add one other layer to Mayweather’s messy investment with the powerhouse actual property agency led by Gotlib and Meyer Orbach.
In 2024, Mayweather went on an acquisition spree in New York Metropolis, Chicago and Miami, producing headlines that the previous boxer purchased a 1,000-unit inexpensive rental portfolio in New York Metropolis from Black Spruce for $402 million and invested one other $100 million in Orbach and Gotlib’s luxurious Manhattan rental portfolio. However Mayweather by no means acquired the whole portfolio.
Mayweather solely acquired a small proportion of curiosity within the 1,000-unit portfolio with an choice to amass extra over time, Enterprise Insider reported in March 2025. Within the luxurious rental portfolio, Mayweather acquired a small fairness funding, which has since been liquidated, in response to sources accustomed to the matter.
Mayweather filed a lawsuit in May, claiming he was defrauded by his pal and enterprise associate.
The boxer claimed that Rechnitz offered false details about his offers, together with telling him that he could be buying the whole 1,000-unit portfolio, not a minority curiosity.
Rechnitz additionally took management of a few of Mayweather’s jewellery and personal jets. Mayweather alleges Rechnitz directed him to promote his Gulfstream jet to an unknown purchaser for an unknown quantity, and that Rechnitz pledged about $100 million price of bijou to 2 Miami jewelers in change for simply $13 million.
Mayweather named Rechnitz’s alleged affiliate Ayal Frist and Alexander Seligson, a New York Metropolis legal professional, as defendants.
Morris Missry, an legal professional representing Rechnitz when the lawsuit was filed in Could, stated the claims could be “refuted by substantial documentary proof, together with Mr. Mayweather’s personal correspondence.”
Mayweather’s “playing points, prolific spending habits, monies owed to third-party collectors and IRS tax liens and levys [sic], in addition to different unseemly habits” would come to gentle throughout court docket proceedings, he said in a statement to TRD at the time.
Rechnitz, Frist and Frist’s firm, Frist Apex Ventures, haven’t filed a response to the allegations. Rechnitz and Frist have till Sep. 25 to answer the grievance.
Seligson’s lawyer filed a movement to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that Mayweather didn’t plead any info displaying that Seligson had precise data of the connection between Rechnitz and Mayweather.
This text has been up to date with a press release from Leo Jacobs, an legal professional representing Floyd Mayweather.
Learn extra
Floyd Mayweather hits Jona Rechnitz with fraud lawsuit, alleges diversion of $175M
From adviser to adversary: A timeline of Floyd Mayweather’s relationship with Jona Rechnitz
Floyd Mayweather Jr buying $402M Black Spruce portfolio
