Jay-Z Has 99 Problems But BDO Ain’t One

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk
Thumbs down BDO LLP

We noticed this morning that an October 2022 article we wrote about Fat Joe suing BDO was suddenly getting a lot of views today, now it’s clear why.

FT says in a fresh story that 54-year-old rapper Jay-Z — real name Shawn Carter aka Mr. Bey — severed his relationship with BDO “following accusations that a staff member had been stealing money from customer accounts.” That former staff member is Vanessa Rodriquez, assistant to Andre N. Chammas who is a tax partner at BDO’s Miami office. Rodriquez was fired in July 2022, after which Fat Joe — real name Joseph Cartagena — noticed “some accounting irregularities” with his accounts. Wrote TMZ in 2022:

For starters, Joe says his wife Lorena’s name was used to open AMEX accounts and make huge unauthorized purchases, including $40K in charges for Uber rides and UberEats deliveries, as well as tuition payments for Rodriguez’s daughter.

Joe also claims he discovered one of his entities, Sneaker Addict Touring, was missing large deposits — to the tune of more than $300K. He says there were similar irregularities with other entities.

As for the Ponzi part of the alleged scheme — Joe claims the firm also defrauded Jose Iglesias of Colorado Rockies, Luis Garcia of the Houston Astros and former Chicago White Sox player Dayan Viciedo.

In the suit, he says AMEX accounts were opened under their names as well, and the money flowed between all of their accounts to keep the Ponzi going. The players are not plaintiffs in the suit, and Joe makes it clear he feels they were victims … just like himself.

Although the firm denied the allegations, BDO eventually leaned back and settled with Fat Joe. The terms were not disclosed.

Said FT:

Staff working for Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, were angered by how BDO responded to the accusations of theft from Fat Joe, who is a client of Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation. They felt the accounting firm became overly defensive and failed to quickly provide Fat Joe with full access to his financial affairs, said people familiar with the matter and his 2022 lawsuit.
That anger led to Jay-Z’s departure as a BDO client in 2023, the people said, within months of Fat Joe leaving.

Fellow Roc Nation artist Megan Thee Stallion also dropped BDO. Their sources are a little late on this but it’s the first we’ve seen it reported. All three stars came to be BDO clients after the firm acquired Miami firm Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra in early 2021, at the time Florida’s largest accounting firm.

Here’s Fat Joe warning everybody not to trust accountants on a Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM appearance in 2022:

Fat Joe’s lawsuit against BDO is embedded below for your reading pleasure.

597769019-Cartagena-v-BDO-USADownload


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BDO Rewarding Employees for Tattling on Headhunters with $5 Starbucks Cards

For whatever reason, we don’t hear a lot of gossip out of BDO. Perhaps it’s because the entire firm is too captivated by the most interesting accounting firm CEO in the world, Jack Weisbaum, and are rendered loyal to a fault, thus choosing not to share the more sordid details of what happens inside B to the D to rtunate because we hear rumors that there are slew of partners who are not pleased with how things are going at firm but no one seems to want to talk. I’d encourage someone to speak up by emailing us.

But for now, we’ll take the opportunity to tell you about the efforts put forth by some inside the firm that were sensitive to the post-busy season onslaught of professional recruiters. As we all know, after people have worked their asses off for three to four months, some might feel unappreciated and opt to look for a new job. Recruiters are acutely aware of this and since it’s their job to fill positions for their clients, it only makes sense that they chase people that are looking for a change. And because professional recruiting is a competitive business, sometimes the emails can clog your inbox like offers for ED drugs. Some partners at BDO thought that in order to help people stave off this bumrush, they would invite employees to simply forward the emails and voicemails received and voilà! $5 of Starbucks burning in your pocket. Oh, and did I mention that there’s no limit for how many you submit? So if you’re a hot piece of public accounting talent, getting tons of calls, you can really clean up. Not only that, the person that submitted the most unique names of headhunters and agencies would receive a $250 AMEX gift card. Yes. Sound petty? Sound pathetic? Sound desperate? Read for yourself and decide.


I split up original screenshot sent to me so that it would be easier to read, hence the narrow break.


So you might expect such an attempt to bribe employees with corporate caffeination would fall flat. That tipping off firm leadership about PEOPLE THAT ARE SIMPLY DOING THEIR JOBS (and maybe change a few professional careers for the positive) would fall on deaf ears. Well, you would be wrong. DEAD WRONG. A follow-up on the firm’s internal website (next page) stated that over 200 submissions were made and one SA in Spokane submitted 15 alone.

That’s right, the effort was so successful that they are extending it through July 8th. Not really knowing what the protocols are, I don’t know what to tell the recruiters to expect in terms of retaliation from the TPTB at BDO but at least you’ll know that if you receive some kind of nasty correspondence, the person who gave you up was baited with the siren’s call that is the white and green coffee cup.

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