JAY-Z’s Ace of Spades is one of the most coveted champagne brands on the market, so much so that three NYPD cops have been charged for reportedly stealing nearly $3,000 worth of the beverage at a music festival last year.
According to Billboard, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought felony charges against Jonathan Gonzalez, Wojciech Czech, and Warren Golden on Monday (May 16) for taking bottles of Hova’s expensive champagne at Electric Zoo in September 2022.
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Gonzalez and Czech are facing one fourth degree charge of grand larceny and one fourth degree charge of criminal possession of stolen property, while Gonzalez and Golden were charged with official misconduct.
Per the prosecutors’ investigation, the three detectives were in charge of narcotics at the festival and saw three VIP attendees order bottles of Ace of Spades.
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Once the attendees stepped away for a brief second, Gonzalez allegedly took two bottles — worth $2,900 in total — retrieved a backpack, and then Czech allegedly gave Gonzalez the bottles to be placed in the backpack. Golden saw what took place, but reportedly didn’t do anything about it.
Once the NYPD detectives exited the VIP tent area and went back to a staff-only location, they were met by two attendees who saw the men take the champagne bottles who then reported the incident to a security guard on location.
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“In addition to the alleged theft that occurred, none of the Officers working at the event stepped up and stopped this activity,” Bragg said in a statement. “Public confidence in the criminal justice system depends on members of law enforcement acting with the utmost integrity while on duty and following the same rules that apply to everyone else.”
“As a result of the continuing joint investigation with the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, two NYPD officers were arrested and subsequently suspended from duty today,” the NYPD told Billboard. “The NYPD will continue to pursue the facts in this investigation and initiate further discipline where appropriate. It’s unclear which two detectives have been arrested.”
JAY-Z may still have 99 problems, but winning court cases isn’t one of them. The Brooklyn billionaire’s $300 million sale of TIDAL recently won a lawsuit against a group of police officers who contested the deal.
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According to Reuters, a Delaware judge tossed out a class action case brought forth by City of Coral Springs Police Officers’ Pension Plan against Jack Dorsey and other Block, Inc. board members over the deal.
The pension fund — a shareholder of Block, Inc. (formerly known as Square, Inc.) — said the company’s purchase of Hov’s streaming service in March 2021 “seemed, by all accounts, a terrible business decision.”
In their complaint, they cited TIDAL’s struggling revenue and loss of major contracts, as well as their involvement in an alleged Norwegian criminal probe regarding its streaming numbers. The company also allegedly accepted a $50 million loan from JAY-Z to “shore up its finances.”
While Hova wasn’t listed as a defendant, his name did appear frequently in the lawsuit due to his involvement in the sale of TIDAL to Block, Inc., whose board he joined as part of the deal.
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The 53-year-old sold his 87.5 percent majority stake to Dorsey’s company for $306 million, but with adjustments, it came out to $237.3 million for an 86.2 percent stake.
The Roc Nation mogul “personally receiv[ed] proceeds in excess of $63 million” from the deal, according to the suit.
