The ‘Billionaire Rabbi astrologer’ who faked a Lord & Taylor Bid

Rabbi Clifford Ari Getz, PhD -- multibillionaire, astrologer, CIA hired hand -- will never rank among the great con artists. 

Mary Baker masqueraded as Princess Caraboo. Frank “Catch Me If You Can” Abagnale impersonated a pilot, doctor and lawyer. Anna Sorokin, the SoHo scammer, posed as German heiress.

Rabbi Getz (in truth, Russell Dwayne Lewis, and not a rabbi at all, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan) made a play for a storied name in American business. Finally, the feds showed up.

Lewis was arrested in August and accused of faking a $290 million bid in bankruptcy court for Lord & Taylor, the nearly 200-year-old department store chain that went under in 2020.  

It was quite a run. The rabbi claimed to hail from London and said he operated a secretive family investment firm, Neviim Equity, out of offices in Beverly Hills. Lion statues and a fountain front the stately building on Wilshire Boulevard. Wearing a flowing beard and a dark suit crowned by a black hat, he boasted that he was worth $10 billion, $18 billion or even $30 billion, depending on who he was talking to.

Even in these post-“Inventing Anna” days, the alleged scheme sounds so over-the-top that it’s hard to believe Lewis got as far as he did.  According to prosecutors, he stole the identity of a man named Clifford Getz, used the Social Security number of a 13-year-old boy in Ohio, forged a passport and reinvented himself as the deal-making billionaire rabbi.   

And he didn’t stop there. Lewis variously claimed to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Secret Service and the Los Angeles Police Department. He allegedly told one mark that he used astrological charts to help pick the jury for the 1995 O.J. Simpson double-murder trial. 

It sounds preposterous. Yet Lewis apparently was convincing enough for the bankrupt Lord & Taylor to spend weeks entertaining his pitch. During one call with the department store’s representatives, he also claimed to have a PhD in theoretical mathematics, as well as master’s degrees in neurophysics, genetics and quantum physics.

Prosecutors don’t identify Lord & Taylor in their charges, but bankruptcy court records and people familiar with the matter say it was the company that received Neviim’s offer.

For the Lord & Taylor team, the bid was well beyond their expectations. A fashion start-up, Le Tote Inc., had paid $71 million to buy Lord & Taylor in 2019. The next year, in the middle of the global Covid-19 pandemic, both companies were in bankruptcy and Lord & Taylor’s 38 remaining stores shuttered. An investment firm, Saadia Group, would eventually pay just $12 million for their intellectual property and e-commerce assets.

Neviim’s offer for the storied retailer would require an up-front cash payment of $10 million or so, according to a person familiar with the offer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Lord & Taylor, its lawyers, bankers and other advisers spent much of August 2020 in calls with Getz and his people, doing due diligence and trying to figure out if the deal was workable. 

Neviim, meanwhile, reviewed Lord & Taylor financial records, leasing deals, real estate holdings and cash flow. Prosecutors say that Getz sent a forged letter from a foreign bank claiming that it held hundreds of millions of euros belonging to him. 

Getz was charged with fraud over the alleged ruse, which prosecutors say cost the company and its advisers thousands of dollars and weeks spent evaluating the bogus bid. 

A lawyer for Getz didn’t return a call and email seeking comment, nor did representatives for Saadia.

Others say they were taken in too.

Haynie Ahn says she connected with the man she knew as Rabbi Getz in 2020. During a “bizarre” 20-minute telephone interview, the two bonded over a shared interest in astrology, she says. The rabbi offered to pay her $230,000 a year to handle HR for Neviim.

At first, Ahn was dubious.  “It felt weird, and something felt off,” she recalls.

Her suspicions aroused, she swung by Neviim’s Wilshire Avenue office. There, she met with Rabbi Getz. He looked the part: modest suit, full beard, glasses, hat. She was told he couldn’t shake her hand because of his interpretation of Jewish law.

Ahn decided Getz was legit. She spent the next few weeks working from home and communicating with other Nevvim employees via telephone and email.

Her copy of the company directory lists 17 employees. One of them is Robert Kogan, who moved to Los Angeles from Miami believing he was going to run a clothing business for the rabbi called “Single Pringle” or “One of Se7en.” The business was to be owned by a company called Rubric Capital Trust, a name Getz lifted from the legitimate firm Rubric Capital Management LP in New York, Kogan claimed in his own lawsuit.

Kogan claims he was promised a salary off $425,000, plus a bonus, as well as use of a private jet. He was told he was going to fly to Vietnam and forge ties with clothing manufacturers there.  

But, as Ahn and Kogan belatedly discovered, Rabbi Getz wasn’t who he said he was – and he wasn’t going to pay them, either. Both quit and subsequently sued Lewis for the money they say he promised them.

Kogan, in his suit, claims Lewis became enraged when Kogan asked if he was ever going see any money. Getz – the name cited in Kogan’s suit – shouted that he was a “rabbi” and an “honorable person,” Kogan claims.  

“Do you think I’m going to make you move here, not pay you and bleed you dry and fire you?’” Getz exploded, according to the complaint filed in California state court. Coffee flew everywhere.    

Kogan didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

In addition to the Lord & Taylor drama, prosecutors say Getz/Lewis scammed a close friend who worked for Neviim out of $3 million. (The former employee is cooperating with prosecutors.) The supposed rabbi also fleeced a widow with four children out of $550,000, the authorities say.

In all, Lewis has been charged with aggravated identity theft and three counts of wire fraud. The fraud counts each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison if he’s convicted. He’s currently jailed in Los Angeles, awaiting transport to New York, according to a Bureau of Prisons record. 

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