Actual Housewives of New York-linked fund accused of ‘extortion’

The husband of an ex-“Actual Housewife” used her status to bamboozle a marijuana grower into an funding deal — and despatched the endeavor up in smoke when his private-equity fund didn’t cough up the cash, in keeping with courtroom papers.

The fund — Gateway Privileged Fund LLC — is managed by means of Reid Drescher, husband of RHONY Aviva and cousin of Fran Drescher, celebrity of “The Nanny.”

Reid Drescher claimed to have get admission to to gobs of money to spend money on Los Angeles-based marijuana grower P&S Ventures LLC, in keeping with P&S’s swimsuit, filed Monday in Ny Very best Court docket.

“Drescher bragged that he used to be a cousin of Fran Drescher, who performed The Nanny within the tv sequence of that identify, and that his spouse, Aviva Drescher, used to be on Bravo’s Actual Housewives of New York, claiming to have many famous person contacts in consequence,” the swimsuit stated.

Aviva Drescher — well-known for throwing her prosthetic leg at every other housewife onscreen — used to be reduce from the hit display in 2014.

Believing his “a lot of materially false representations,” P&S agreed to just accept a $5.4 million funding from Drescher’s fund in change for inventory.

However Reid Drescher used to be quickly “compelled” to confess that his fund didn’t have the promised cash, the swimsuit stated.

The fund had raised simply $1 million of a deliberate $120 million as of 2019, in keeping with its most up-to-date securities submitting.

Gateway in the end simplest kicked $1.35 million into P&S. The shortfall used to be “extremely damaging” to P&S, the swimsuit stated and drove it right into a “expensive and harmful receivership,” the swimsuit stated.

P&S is looking for compensatory and punitive damages, and inquiring for its contract with Gateway to be canceled. An lawyer for P&S, Matthew Press, declined to remark.

An lawyer representing Drescher and Gateway stated P&S’s lawsuit used to be “a frivolous contract declare.”

“The entity this is being sued shall be submitting some very severe counterclaims,” Richard Roth, lawyer for Drescher and Gateway, stated in an interview. “We’re going to report a large counterclaim right here. We’re going to carry the plaintiffs chargeable for their contractual duties.”