Photo Credit: Damon Dash by TRE Productions / CC by 4.0
Former Jay-Z business partner Damon Dash’s filmmaking company was sold for a paltry $100 at a bankruptcy auction held to offset the million he owes.
Damon Dash, former Jay-Z business partner and hip-hop mogul, owes nearly $1 million from defamation lawsuits. Despite making an attempt to offset some of that debt through a bankruptcy auction, his filmmaking company only sold for a measly $100.50.
The company at auction, Poppington LLC, included rights to Dash’s best known film, Honor Up, with a cast featuring Dash, Cam’ron, and Dash’s cousin Stacey Dash (best known for her role in the ‘90s film Clueless). Other films included the sequel, Too Honorable, a documentary called Welcome to Blakroc, and a personal project called We Went to China: Our Search for Like Minded Individuals.
“I think he’s a fool, man,” said the winning (and only) bidder, Mike Muntaser, CEO of Muddy Water Motion Pictures, who also told The New York Post that the purchase was a deliberate “jab” at Dash following years of unnecessary litigation. “He’s just a problem.”
“He has an ego,” Muntaser continued. “I think he’s just bitter [coming] from where he was to where he is, and he just blames everybody else and doesn’t look at himself in the mirror.”
Muntaser also has a claim to the $973,000 that Dash owes after losing three civil defamation lawsuits filed by Muntaser and filmmaker Josh Webber. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder’s vast debts.
In September, Dash declared bankruptcy after he claimed to only have a few thousand dollars to his name, despite owing over $25 million in federal and state taxes, child support, and other debts. Of that, at least $5 million is owed in civil lawsuits. Dash has also faced threats of jail time for having refused to pay his civil debts.
According to attorney Chris Brown—who will get a $33.50 cut from the auction after having won his own civil lawsuit against Dash to the tune of $150,000—Dash’s bankruptcy claim is just another attempt to avoid paying. Brown hoped the auction would at least dredge up a few bidders and maybe a few hundred thousand dollars, but nobody showed up.
“It’s more of an undertaking of what they viewed Dash’s work to be as opposed to anything else,” said Brown. “Like, no one cares that you went to China, Mr. Dash.”
