Instagram influencer Jay Mazini: 'I'm not what everybody portrays me as'

Standing on the cracked cement floor, Amjad Mashal shielded his face with his hands as a man he called his torturer punched him in the head and body. He landed at least 20 blows, until Mashal could no longer bear the pain. His hands fell from his face and his mind went blank, his body sliding into numbness.

Next to him, the tall man with curly black hair kept punching and screaming in Arabic, calling him a son of a bitch. Then, he reached for a machete.

“He puts it on my neck and tells me, ‘If you don’t listen to what I’m telling you, I’m gonna slit your throat. If you go to police, if you do anything, not only will you be dead — your family will be dead,’” Mashal recalled in an interview.

Moments before, a white Range Rover had rolled up outside the storefront building in Passaic, New Jersey in the still-dark morning hours. Kidnappers dragged Mashal out of the vehicle, placing a black canvas bag over his head as they walked him into an empty basement with exposed pipes. They ordered him to strip, then punched him in the head and whipped his legs with a cord.

Jay Mazini, an Instagram influencer from nearby Edgewater, was demanding access to an Instagram page full of comments and complaints accusing him of running schemes and stealing.

“Give me a day. I’ll talk to the guy,” Mashal pleaded with Mazini and three other men. “I’ll get you the scam page.”

They were also furious that Mashal berated Mazini’s family members, calling them thieves and cheats in live Instagram videos. Mazini’s accomplice, holding the machete, demanded that Mashal apologize for bad-mouthing the family.

“He doesn’t want to ever see anything about the females of the family ever being spoken again. He doesn’t want me to talk about Jebara ever again,” said Mashal, referring to Mazini by his real name.

When they let him go in Edgewater close to sunrise, Mashal limped back to his car with a sprained ankle, a concussion, and cuts and bruises. He went home, then to a hospital. Despite the threats, he called police, who collected video footage from street cameras and phone evidence that backed up Mashal’s claims.

“I’m no gangster, OK?” said Mashal, who is 30 and lives in Wayne, New Jersey. “I was scared for my life.”

A year later, Mazini pleaded guilty to kidnapping and was ordered to serve five years in jail. Today, he is detained at the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey, where he awaits sentencing on federal fraud charges for scamming investors out of millions of dollars. About 10 miles away in Hackensack, Mashal is also behind bars, accused of accepting a $200,000 bribe to drop charges and of pointing an airsoft gun at Mazini’s father-in-law.

Mazini’s arrest was a major blow to a crumbling enterprise that thrived on fame and wealth exploited and enabled on social media. An Instagram influencer, Mazini built a following of fans who turned to him for entertainment and inspiration. Others hoped to get rich like him, and they entrusted their money to him.

But in the months leading to his arrest, customers and investors were accusing him of deception — and federal investigators were closing in.

‘Would Rihanna follow a scammer?’

Aruna Lara was scrolling Instagram at home in Port of Spain, Trinidad, when a promotion caught her eye. Mazini, the New Jersey entrepreneur known for his luxury lifestyle and big cash giveaways, was offering classes to learn trading stocks and options.

She admired Mazini, who spoke online about faith and building wealth through hard work and entrepreneurship. A university student in biomedical engineering, she had her own side business buying and reselling cellphones and wanted to learn how to invest.

The first course at Mazini Academy got positive online reviews, but for Lara, the clincher was that her idol, superstar pop and R&B singer Rihanna, was one of Mazini’s Instagram followers. She enrolled in 2019, putting down $350 for a year of twice-weekly classes, then another $500 for her first trade.

“I thought it was coming from a good place,” said Lara. “This man showed pictures of himself in Jerusalem talking about Christianity and Muslim faith and different things, how God was most important and how he made it from nothing.”

“I didn’t think it would be a scam,” she said. “Would Rihanna follow a scammer?”

Lara logged on to Discord, a messaging app, for her classes. Mazini was online for three group classes, then stopped showing up, she said. She requested a refund. In a phone call, Mazini demanded she provide her email address and password so he could send money. She said he sounded nothing like he did in his online promos, and that he shouted and cursed at her.

Weeks later, she said, she discovered about $25,000 stolen from her bank account. Her family was upset, saying she had put them at risk. They were so furious, she said, that they asked her to move out.

“It’s something I think about all the time,” Lara said in a tearful interview. “I am still trying to get back the money, because I need to live my life and move on and I don’t have the support of my parents anymore.”

The stress has taken a toll on her health, she said. Lara suffers from sickle cell anemia, a blood disorder that can cause fatigue, pain and shortness of breath — and can worsen with stress.

In a brief phone call from the Passaic County Jail, Mazini said he was eager to tell his side of the story, but his attorney advised him not to give an interview while he awaited sentencing in a federal fraud case. Asked about allegations against him, he said he needed to “clear the waters.”

“It’s allegations at the end of the day,” Mazini said in the phone call. “They can say their part. I’ll say my part. I know the truth will prevail.”

Asked how he was doing in jail, he responded: “I feel great, Alhamdulillah,” he said, using the Arabic phrase for "praise be to God." “Nobody stays in here forever.”

Social media: A gold mine for scams

Today, Lara is among a host of people who accuse Mazini of stealing.

Mazini’s followers saw a lot of reasons to believe in him. In videos, he handed out stacks of cash to strangers, who cheered and wept with joy. He stood with famous hip-hop stars giving out cash. Wearing traditional clothing, he prayed in Mecca.

He had characteristics that many successful influencers share — relatable, attractive and appearing to have expertise and a lifestyle people wanted, said Kelli Burns, an associate professor at the University of South Florida’s school of advertising and mass communications and an expert on social media.

“On social media, perceptions are everything,” Burns said. “What he was doing was trying to build this perception that he was not only a wealthy person but also a generous person. That all helped in his favor to continue to build this trust we are talking about. People maybe felt they could trust a person who was giving money away.”

Online followers may fall into a “para-social relationship” in which they feel a special connection to a media figure, but it’s a relationship that goes only one way, she said. They also tend to have their guard down when information appears in their feed, compared with when they seek out information on their own, Burns said.

In this case, many people were lured by the prospect of winning money, having seen Mazini promise cash giveaways for the first group of buyers during certain promotions for his clothing line or academy. His promised giveaways totaled many millions, more than he appeared to be making or selling.

When he started the Mazini Academy, about 600 students enrolled to learn how to invest, said Youssef Haggag, a former employee at the academy, in an Instagram appearance in 2021. After Mazini announced a giveaway, subscriptions rose to 3,200, he said.

Ultimately, the platforms that made Mazini famous also fueled his undoing, as victims and critics turned online to post complaints and swap stories about him. They shared information on how to contact the FBI and get refunds from PayPal. They created Instagram pages to expose alleged scams.

On the Jay Mazini Scam page that Mazini loathed, about 70 commenters said they had been scammed, mostly because they had bought clothing that never came, or signed up for Mazini Academy classes that were not taught. Many more people contacted the page in private direct messages, said Mashal, who said the page administrator gave him access to the page after Mazini’s arrest.

“That was the page which basically helped to take him down,” Mashal said. “That was our weapon — social media. If social media was going to make somebody, it was going to break him.”

What drove Jay Mazini?

For charismatic con artists, social media has become a modern-day gold mine.

A quarter of all people who reported losing money to fraud in 2021 said it started with an ad, a post or a message they saw on social media, according to the Federal Trade Commission. More than 95,000 people reported $770 million in losses that started on social media platforms, the agency said.

Influencers are driven by the desire to make money in an environment that is a “hotbed for scams,” Burns said. They may feel a high or endorphin rush having power to influencer followers, she added.

Mazini appeared to get caught up in the thrill of online fame, said a family friend from Paterson.

“I think he started off on right path, being this individual that really wanted to make a difference, collecting money and donating,” he said. “I think it got to his head, the social media and the clout. Then one thing led to another, and he made a lot of bad decisions.”

In November, Mazini pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn court to federal charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering in connection with schemes purporting to invest in halal products and to buy bitcoin.

He used proceeds for online sports gambling and luxury cars and to provide Ponzi-like payments to previous investors, federal investigators said.

Along the way, a web of chaos seemed to follow.

Three accomplices were charged in the kidnapping; Mazini's wife was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping, witness tampering and bribery; a Clifton man also was charged with witness tampering. Family members are named in lawsuits against him.

‘Not what everybody portrays me as’

The feud with Mashal did not end, even after Mazini’s arrest.

On June 5, Mashal drove to the home of Mazini’s wife and family in Paterson. According to a criminal complaint, he pointed an airsoft gun — a realistic-looking toy gun that shoots pellets — at the house and then at Mazini’s father-in-law, threatening to kill him. Mashal previously sent messages on Instagram saying the family will "live in fear," the father-in law told police.

Mashal disputed the account. He said he drove by and recorded video of the house on his phone as Mazini’s wife, Joumana Danoun, sat outside. Danoun’s father ran toward him and saw the gun in his car, he said. Mashal claimed he did not threaten him or point the gun at him.

He had the gun, he said, because he was getting threats after Mazini was jailed. He was on edge, worried about being attacked again and using Adderall to keep him awake for long stretches, he said.

Three months later, police charged Mashal with agreeing to take a $200,000 bribe to drop charges. Mashal said he reluctantly agreed to take a payment because the families had opted for a traditional form of conflict resolution that is common in Arab communities. Called “sulha” in Arabic, families or village leaders meet to resolve differences, make peace and decide restitution.

Mashal said Mazini's in-laws approached him and his relatives repeatedly to urge him to settle, he said. They told him it was his "haq," or "right" in Arabic, and the only way he would get restitution for his pain and suffering. "In Islam, this is how we do things," Mashal recalled their saying.

Mashal pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and to bribery and is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 6, said his attorney, Joseph Fell of the firm Hanlon Dunn Robertson, based in Morristown.

Mashal, detained at the Bergen County Jail, said he lost work in clothing printing and car customization after the kidnapping. After his release, he wants to pursue work in hip-hop and electronic music and “take advantage of the traffic and attention I get from being in this kind of spotlight,” he said in an October interview at the jail.

Despite his harrowing experience, Mashal said he forgave Mazini. He said he did not think his former schoolmate meant to hurt him, describing him as “not a violent person.”

He believes he was pressured by other rougher individuals who had money in his businesses.

In the phone call from the Passaic County Jail, Mazini did not mention Mashal. Asked about allegations of fraud against him, he defended his character.

“Everything happens for a reason,” he said. “I’m not concerned about what people say. It would be nice to say my part of the story just to clear the waters and just to, like, shed light on the truth.

“I know in my heart my intentions are pure and I’m a really good person,” Mazini added. “I’m not what everybody portrays me as.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jay Mazini fraud case: Social media a 'hotbed for scams'