By News Editor 
Based on available data, DJ Envy does seem to be liable for some of the civil and potential criminal claims against Flip2Dao
DJ Envy is being accused of being the front-man for a real estate scheme that involved multiple investors putting up money for an identical property without knowing beforehand.
Economic Context: Everyone Has Credit and Money
During the Covid lockdown era, real estate linked asset values fell and then reinvigorated themselves through cheap money. As the FED lowered interest rates to effectively 0, banks were positioned to dole out trillions of dollars in the form of loans into the economy. Money was cheap. By extension, credit was easy to obtain, which permitted more people to engage in real estate purchases.
As a result, this cheap money was available in other ways. For example, banks would finance homes and refinance homes, with the latter being a way (really, the only way besides selling) to access liquid funds linked to record breaking real estate valuations. These funds made their way into secondary home purchases, stock purchases and increased consumption of all goods and services. This influx and creation of capital led to massive amounts of inflation. PPP loans for businesses allowed them to survive that under economic normal conditions would be swept away – these conditions will be difficult to replicate. Thus, people unlocked enormous amounts of debt in 2021 through 2022, but profitability is a whole different story for this year and next.
Nevertheless, people partied hard and bet on things, like cryptocurrency, fractional banking and real estate linked asset classes.
The average consumer acting on very little information is exposed to cyclical and volatile market conditions, while also being even more exposed to bad actors. So, you can imagine our surprise that one such alleged actor is thought to be the nationally known DJ Envy, whose touted such cliches, like ‘generational wealth’, ‘real estate investment’ and talked about the virtues of being employed. A fine example, but other commentators have started to look under the hood, including a substation of NBC News. DJ Envy is one of the hosts of the ‘Breakfast Club’ in Power 105.
Cesar and Jennifer Piña Acted Alone or In Concert with Envy?
What seemed to be a very casual and spontaneous number of public endorsements, DJ Envy placed a national spotlight on Cesar Piña‘s growing business now alleged to be a real estate themed Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves taking one investor’s money to pay off a previous investor so as to appear as a profitable venture. The scheme is called ‘Flip2Dao’ and managed to get national and New York attention.
In today’s modern approach to education and wealth management, easy to use websites allege that they can do both without any considerable amount of work from their seminar attendees. In this context, DJ Envy, RaaShaun Casey, then pitched the investment opportunity to business contacts, acquaintances and even his auto detailing provider.
As a former guest of the Breakfast Club, Cesar Piña and his wife, Jennifer Piña appeared multiple times on the Breakfast Club and even leveraged his brand on videos marketing the venture. Their website has changed multiple times. In one iteration of their website, Flip2Dao presents as a real estate LLC that invoked all the buzzwords so prevalent in the second half of a 2021 and first half of 2022. The company went from selling seminars to upselling those same customers into a range of real estate linked investments.
Customers would typically invest anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 dollars into a particular address that at times was not even owned by the company. There are allegations of multi-million-dollar losses and already there is one default judgment against Cesar Piña. However, New York NBC 4 alleges that in vouching for Cesar Piña, DJ Envy was also directly involved in the day to day operations for marketing the company.
The most pressing question for many of the victims of the alleged scam is whether DJ Envy was directly involved in the company. DJ Envy is alleging that he was never directly involved in the company that managed those transactions. However, some digital footprints exist, such as video and websites that listed DJ Envy as a CSO, an executive in the Flip2Dao.
For about 5 years, DJ Envy has promoted Cesar Piña‘s real estate enterprise as an inspiring tale of a formerly incarcerated individual who is now engaged in legitimate business. The airtime DJ Envy provided was substantive, and with IHeart claiming millions of listeners on a monthly basis means that there may have been at minimum a misuse of company resources.
DJ Envy himself could be liable, but even worse, IHeartRadio may be liable for permitting the real estate scam to perpetuate itself with free marketing. In a single month, the radio station offers 276 million listeners on-air every month. Fraudalent marketing on top of free marketing is something that can not be brushed aside as he leveraged the brand of the ‘Breakfast Club’ to obtain customers for Cesar Piña‘s.
One of the most comprehensive reviews of the scam is done by the YouTube Channel, ‘What Happened to Common Sense’: