They believed his billionaire facade. After failed gifts to CCU, FAMU, they feel ‘scammed’

An overwhelming sense of fear crept into the pit of Kimberly Abbott's stomach and she stood still, paintbrush in hand, on her half-stained back patio in her quiet suburban Alabama neighborhood.

Already frazzled by the barrage of calls she'd received from reporters in the preceding days about her supposed involvement in a Texas hemp farming company, she placed her cell phone down nearby on speaker mode. She was open to hearing out the man she'd offered advice to for nearly eight years, but ready to be firm with him by demanding he remove her name from his company's website.

Formerly known as Birmingham City Councilwoman Kimberly Rafferty, Abbott was years past her stint in public office and thought her days of appearing on the news were done.

She'd since moved about an hour away and didn't miss being involved in politics, but it warmed her heart when people occasionally recognized her and told her she made some sort of positive impact on their lives.

She suddenly felt all that goodwill slipping away, replaced by the prospect of immense shame thanks to hanging onto her friendship with Gregory Gerami, an enigmatic young man she'd long felt just needed some guidance despite her husband's pleas to cut ties with him.

Gerami's story captured national attention in May after the relatively unknown Texas hemp farming executive surfaced at Florida A&M University's graduation ceremony with a giant novelty check representing what appeared to be the largest donation ever to a historically Black college and university. But the excitement surrounding his gift was quickly waning as details trickling out about his life cast serious doubt regarding his ability to fund the $237 million pledge.

When the university revealed that the gift was linked to stocks in his company, Batterson Farms Corp, reporters began contacting Abbott because she was listed as co-CEO on the company's website.

Abbott developed a close relationship with Gerami after he tried and failed to redevelop an abandoned mall in her district, and he kept calling her seeking advice, both business and personal.

While Abbott had agreed to serve on the company's board — listening in on lengthy, glitchy virtual conference calls where Gerami made colossal claims with minimal follow-through — her involvement in its operations was inconsequential, and she'd been informally backing away from that time-wasting endeavor for a year, she said.

Now Gerami, interrupting Abbott's daily domestic duties, was threatening to sue her for violating a nondisclosure agreement she had no memory of signing.

"I was just absolutely terrified," she said. "I don't have an attorney. I don't know how to fight these fights."

She'd long had her doubts about Gerami, but only now, as he threatened to blow up her life, did she begin to realize just how badly she'd been fooled this whole time.

"The thought if he had drug me down with him, the shame I would have to live with, where people believed in me and thought I had half a brain, and it turned out I didn't even have half a brain because I fell for the bullshit he was (peddling)," Abbott said. "I believed in him far longer than I should have."

A third-party investigator would later determine Gerami's generous gift to FAMU was fraudulent, likely playing a role in the school's president and other executives losing their jobs .

The Sun News' own investigation, which began after it identified him as the anonymous donor whose $95 million gift to Coastal Carolina University collapsed in 2020, has found little proof Gerami is the wealthy business savant he portrays himself to be. Information publicly available, records compiled, and interviews with several of his longtime former associates and Gerami himself, instead reveal a personable storyteller, able to garner enough symbols of legitimacy to convince reputable professionals and institutions he's worth their time and attention.

Certain details surrounding Gerami resemble the stories of infamous con artists including Anna Delvey, Billy McFarland and Elizabeth Holmes with their "fake-it-till-you-make-it" mindsets and engaging personalities, one fraud expert suggested.

"He sounds like that kind of guy that is trying to create something out of nothing," said Jason Zirkle, training director for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. "... It's just a guy that's bullshitting everybody, but he's super outgoing, (so) everybody likes him (and) nobody is doing their due diligence."

But while those well-known fraudsters all had clear financial victims that eventually landed them in the crosshairs of law enforcement, Gerami's motivations are more murky. Abbott and others who have known him for years say he never asked them for money. They believe he mostly just wants attention, multiple former associates told The Sun News.

"Most fraudsters, the vast majority, are stealing money," said Zirkle, who agreed to discuss the situation surrounding Gerami while emphasizing he's not privy to every detail, so he can't say he's definitely a con artist. "(This story) is just unusual."

Even though he doesn't appear to be financially benefiting much from his misrepresentations, Gerami has left many feeling hurt in different ways, The Sun News investigation found. Jobs were lost. Shame and embarrassment were felt. Time was wasted. Dreams were built up and dashed. And trust was broken.

"People like him make people like me scared, very nontrusting," Abbott said. "You become extremely jaded, and it's not jaded in that you distrust everyone. It's jaded in that you don't trust yourself anymore because you made a judgment call and you believed in somebody, and ... then to find out that all they did was lie the entire time. ... It just, it overwhelmed me."

Searching for a realtor Willie Brewer woke up in the middle of the night and was having trouble getting back to sleep, so he grabbed his cell phone off his nightstand, opened up his Instagram app and started scrolling.

Cute videos of friends' pets, he kept scrolling... former co-workers' European vacation pictures, he kept scrolling... a post about the "biggest scam in HBCU history," he kept scrolling... highlights from a current NFL player dominating when he was in high school, he kept scrolling... Wait a second, Brewer paused, scrolling back up to the post about the HBCU scam post, thinking he recognized the name.

"Oh (wow), that's ... Greg," he realized. "I hope this (jerk) gets caught. I hope. I hope."

Brewer once considered Gerami a friend, but in this moment, he's feeling a kinship with Florida A&M officials.

"(I felt) like l got scammed, like the frickin HBCU," the Dallas, Texas-area realtor explained. "All these promises and dreams on, like, this big amount of money that you're supposedly worth or that you can create another business that you've already created, a successful business. ... You made it very vivid and credible, but pulled the rug out from under my feet."

Their relationship started around 2014 when Gerami, 21 at the time, called to have Brewer show him some houses. After visiting four or five increasingly expensive properties, Gerami's interest in a new home appeared to wane, but he had piqued Brewer's interest during their time together by boasting about his successful business ventures and expansive real estate portfolio.

Brewer quickly went from trying to help sell Gerami a home to being sold on the prospect of becoming his business partner.

"I guess for me, he flipped the script pretty much," Brewer told The Sun News.

The two signed documents in early 2016 to form B&G Home Services, purportedly a management company to broker out home services including construction and landscaping. One of Gerami's LinkedIn profiles claims that the company serves more than 8,500 homes nationwide, but Brewer said the endeavor amounted to nothing more than talk. Gerami told The Sun News that isn't his current LinkedIn profile, and he agreed the business made no money.

Expanding into Alabama Gerami seemed to like having Brewer around to talk real estate when he worked with others on business deals that never went anywhere and to give him advice on potential home purchases he never made, Brewer said. At one point around mid-2016, he traveled with Gerami to Birmingham, Alabama, to tour the state's largest mansion, which he was considering buying.

The 15-bedroom, 16-bath estate sitting on a 27-acre lot featured a resort-style pool with a waterfall, a 3,000-square-foot guesthouse, a 2,000-bottle wine cellar and a horse-riding arena.

Gerami told The Sun News he started spending a lot of time in Birmingham around 2015 because he had a friend working with the city government who asked him to do some consulting work for an affiliate of the city trying to spearhead economic development. Once there, he quickly got connected with a prominent local commercial real estate broker.

That broker, who asked not to be named, first connected with Gerami when he was pitching an idea to purchase the long-abandoned Century Plaza Mall. Gerami, at 24 years old, appeared on a local television news station in 2017 touting his plans to spend an estimated $480 million to buy and renovate the property into an indoor water park and resort with laser tag, paintball and a bowling alley.

That idea never came to fruition — the mall has since been razed and turned into an Amazon warehouse — but the Birmingham broker agreed to form a business partnership with Gerami called Batterson Southeast Capital.

Someone he trusted introduced him to Gerami, the broker told The Sun News, so there was inherent trust that Gerami was the wealthy businessman he claimed to be.

Gerami had a massive inheritance and was set to make millions selling his own company in Chicago, originally a small-scale landscaping venture he'd turned into a major property management firm, he told the broker. The plan for Batterson Southeast Capital was to take that money he'd earn and start buying and developing major real estate projects. The Sun News was unable to find any proof Gerami ever conducted any business in Chicago.

The Birmingham broker spent countless hours for years working with Gerami on potential projects: expanding a Texas indoor water park company to add new locations across the midwest, consulting with the Cherokee Indian tribe in Oklahoma on a land development deal, a mixed-use development on Panther Island in Fort Worth, Texas, and even investing in a California defense tech company that was working on a sort of spray paint that turned bulletproof when it hardened.

He'd analyze the business plans, map out the potential path toward profitability and sit in on calls with strangers all over the country, the broker said. They were often good ideas, but it was always the same story over and over — just as they were getting close to the point where it was time for Gerami to provide the funds needed to finalize the deal, he found an excuse not to move forward. Gerami never spent a dime on any real estate project through Batterson Southeast Capital, the broker said.

"I'm getting depressed looking at all this work I did," he told The Sun News, scrolling through email chains involving Gerami.

Gerami told The Sun News that Batterson Southeast Capital was an investment consulting venture, not set up to purchase real estate.

Brewer and the broker both say Gerami was able to sound knowledgeable in most situations, capitalizing on his outgoing nature to pick up and parrot information from the distinguished professionals that surrounded him.

"He comes across as being what he says he is," the Birmingham broker said. "He has a general knowledge, and he can talk like he knows what he's talking about. I think he's sort of like a sponge. He asks enough questions of people where he takes it and starts using it.

"Like when we would talk about real estate, and he'd say, 'Well how do we do that?' And I'd tell him how to structure it. Next thing I know, he's out there telling everybody how to structure their deals with him."

Threatening lawsuits He mostly cut ties with Gerami around 2021, he said, after CCU announced the gift agreement was terminated. He started questioning Gerami's financial status, which was received as a personal affront.

"He acts indignant, always acted indignant that anybody questions him," the broker said. "But that's what you do when you're not telling the truth."

Brewer likewise compared Gerami to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, describing his innate ability to build people up and make them feel special and important in one instant and then threaten to sue those same people for minor grievances.

Gerami has told The Sun News he has no qualms about suing people. Across multiple interviews, he's threatened to sue FAMU, a blogger , a hemp company and a Sun News reporter investigating him.

The only evidence The Sun News found that he's ever followed through on that threat happened in 2018 when a group of Dallas-area realtors identified Gerami, seeking to view expensive homes without proof he could afford them, as suspicious.

The Collin County Association of Realtors warned its members in a March 2018 email newsletter that a man named Greg Gerami or Bryson J Gerami — a name he's used on social media — is contacting agents attempting to get into homes he couldn't afford, possibly with the intent to burglarize them, court records show. The association retracted that warning in its next newsletter after Gerami called them to complain, but he sued them for libel anyway.

Jami Mumley, the realtor whose interactions with Gerami led to the association's initial warning, according to court records, told The Sun News she met Gerami for coffee after his request for assistance buying properties in Dallas was directed to her office.

"The vibe was just very, just nothing added up with what he told me," Mumley recalled.

He wanted her to show him multimillion-dollar homes, but he was driving an old sedan and dressed very casually, she said. He claimed to be divorced with kids at a nearby expensive private school, but he looked too young to have kids old enough to attend. He also boasted about owning multiple rental properties, implying he would've worked with realtors previously, yet he had submitted his request for assistance on Realtor.com.

Gerami was still married at the time and had a son under a year old, public records show. The Sun News was only able to locate one deed record under Gerami's or his known businesses' name in states he's told others he owned properties — a $90,000 lot outside San Antonio that he appears to have owned for three days in 2022. Other addresses listed to him or his business entities are owned by others, including his adopted mom and ex-wife's family, property records show.

Gerami told The Sun News he doesn't purchase properties in his own name because he values privacy.

Mumley told Gerami she needed to see proof of funds to start showing him homes in that price range, and he sent what appeared to be a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet he said was his investment portfolio. She never showed him any homes, she told The Sun News.

The association ended up settling with Gerami for an undisclosed amount, court records show.

Gerami declined to discuss the lawsuit, except to say there's no law requiring or defining proof of funds, so it's his right to redact information from documents he shares.

"If people are not signing (nondisclosure agreements), I'm not giving you my personal information," he said. "It's that simple."

Gerami also showed Mumley a YouTube video, she recalled, of the news story highlighting his plan to redevelop the mall in Birmingham — a project he'd already abandoned.

Connecting with politicians "Apparently it looks like this may be the right time and the right place for this gentleman to come in and take over," Abbott tells the reporter in the news video.

She recalled that getting the blighted property located in her district redeveloped was a priority, and she figured discussing Gerami's idea on the news would generate interest in the property, even if she wasn't confident he had the money.

"I thought he was way too young (and) that he was hiding something because he was never quite honest," she told The Sun News. "He was convincing enough that you thought there was potential in what he was proposing, but because he avoided any absolutes in his commitments or providing personal information, you had doubts that he was actually what he seemed to be."

Though his mall-turned-entertainment complex idea never moved forward, Abbott continued fielding Gerami's phone calls, even after she left city council in 2017. She'd offer him advice as the two formed a sort of mother-son-type relationship — a natural role for a woman whose daughters' friends all called her mom.

"It just appeared to me that he had zero clues," she said. "In the back of my head, I'm thinking there's a lot of really rich people out there that have no idea ... what the real world is like. They've always had everything handed to them, and now they're in the business world, and they're trying to figure things out on their own, and they're not getting it."

Gerami was naturally drawn to the city councilwoman as he's had an affinity for politics most of his life, his social media posts show, regularly posting his opinions about elections and snapping pictures with local politicians in Texas.

That political proclivity led a 21-year-old Gerami to run for an Arlington city council position in 2015, posting on one of his campaign social media pages that after serving on council, his goal was to become mayor, then state senator and finally governor. He lost that election, receiving the least votes of four candidates vying for the position.

He later ran again in 2019 for city council in Saginaw, a suburb in Fort Worth, Texas, again losing with the least amount of votes among those running.

CCU gift agreement Around the same time of that second ill-fated city council campaign, Gerami started showing an interest in making large donations to colleges.

He asked Abbott which institutions he should reach out to, she recalled, and she suggested Miles College, an HBCU near Birmingham, because he often discussed a desire to capitalize on being Black to achieve his business goals.

Adopted into a white family at a young age, Gerami didn't appear to express an interest in advocacy related to racial social justice, Abbott said, but did want to promote all his potential ventures as minority-owned. He'd ask her to be involved occasionally so that the business could also be woman-owned, she said.

When Coastal Carolina University announced in June 2020 it was the benefactor of a $95 million planned gift from an anonymous donor , the press release stated that "the donor describes himself as an African American entrepreneur and philanthropist" who was also working with Miles College, while exploring supporting other HBCUs. Gerami requested the inclusion of Miles College and HBCUs in the press release "for personal reasons," internal CCU emails show.

That planned gift was just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes, Gerami and CCU officials had finalized a $464 million gift agreement payable over eight years that would transform the school's athletic and academic programs.

With no clear connection to the university and nominal public footprint, Gerami had to overcome severe skepticism from CCU officials to get to that point, internal records show. But he'd built up enough connections with reputable professionals, including Abbott and the Birmingham broker, who were willing to bolster his credibility by attending or calling into meetings on his behalf.

The university redacted the names of people they spoke with about Gerami during the process, but their titles included investment advisor, financial advisor, city council member and attorney.

Abbott, who Gerami used as a character reference during conversations with CCU officials, wasn't aware the CCU gift agreement fell apart until she started getting calls about the situation at Florida A&M. She also didn't know how much he had promised them until told by a Sun News reporter, she said. But she wasn't shocked.

"It's always an astronomical amount of money you can't wrap your head around," Abbott said.

Hitting roadblocks After CCU conducted an internal investigation into Gerami, it announced during Nov. 2020 that it was terminating its relationship with the anonymous donor . While the university has refused to release the results of that investigation , numerous CCU philanthropy employees lost their jobs around the same time. A spokesman for the university denied the departures were related to the failed gift.

Also around that same time, Gerami contacted an Oregon-based wealth management advisor, Ryland Moore, seeking to open a $10-15 million account for his fiance, who lived up there, Moore told The Sun News.

When Moore asked for proof of funds, Gerami told him about the Birmingham mall project, sent him a copy of his settlement check from the Collin County realtors lawsuit with the amount redacted, and pointed him toward news stories about the CCU anonymous donor.

Moore called CCU officials to try to verify what he was being told, but they denied knowing him, he said. Gerami subsequently berated him for contacting the school, and Moore decided to take the situation to his compliance officer, fearing Gerami was misrepresenting himself.

The Oregon woman Gerami described as his fiance, who had just graduated high school in 2020, told The Sun News Gerami initially started messaging her on Instagram trying to convince her to move to Texas to be his private chef. They later exchanged a few text messages, but they never had a romantic relationship, and she wasn't aware he tried to open a multimillion-dollar account for her, she said.

"It's the strangest situation I've ever encountered, by far," said Moore, who exclusively works with high-net-worth families. "People who are wealthy never fight back on this, because they're used to showing proof of funds all the time."

Gerami declined to comment on the Oregon situation.

Zirkle, the fraud expert, explained that a fraudster attempting to create something out of nothing is often fraught with failures.

"You may get caught here and there, but at the end, you've told so many huge lies and created such a huge back story that you can walk into a university and say you've got $400 million and you've got some level of reporting and letters to back it up," he said.

Infiltrating financial industries While Gerami couldn't convince Moore to open an account for him, he was able to years later convince a financial advising firm affiliated with Raymond James Financial Services he was worth billions.

Just weeks before Gerami was set to give FAMU's commencement address, university officials received a letter from a Raymond James executive informing them that previous letters issued in February and March verifying the value of Gerami's accounts with them were inaccurate .

The February letter, sent to FAMU, confirmed that Gerami had at least $80 million in assets in his Raymond James account. The March letter, provided to The Sun News by a Texas realtor Gerami had sent it to as proof of funds to be shown expensive homes, confirmed he had more than $3.8 billion in assets with the firm.

The San Antonio-area financial advisors who produced the letters declined to comment.

Gerami told The Sun News that the assets he held with Raymond James were the private equity shares from his hemp company, Batterson Farms Corp. He hadn't conducted an independent valuation of the company by that point, he said, so the firm just accepted the value he assigned the shares.

ZIrkle said it's unfortunately not uncommon for an investment banker to take a potential client at their word before conducting due diligence because they're prioritizing gaining that client's business.

"To me, it's kind of a shock that would happen, that he would be able to talk them into (issuing a letter confirming those assets)," he said, "but nothing surprises me nowadays with banks, especially when you're dealing with anything related to venture capital or investment banking or private bankers trying to woo clients in."

When FAMU officials confronted Gerami about the Raymond James revocation letter, he claimed the institution had racist intent and didn't want an HBCU to receive so much money, according to a 3rd-party investigation. They accepted that explanation without further scrutiny.

Voided valuation After his donation started getting scrutinized, Gerami did hire a valuation firm to give Batterson Farms a qualified appraisal. California-based Stonebridge Advisory estimated the company was worth nearly $1.5 billion, according to the first couple pages of their report that were provided to FAMU.

But Dan O'Connell, president of Stonebridge, told The Sun News that Gerami appeared to be misrepresenting the purpose of the appraisal, which is critical in determining how they conduct their valuation. The listed purpose was for a possible sale of the company, while a valuation for gifting purposes would be more stringent, he said. They weren't aware of the FAMU situation when they performed the valuation.

"The difference with gifting is I'm signing my name to the U.S. government," O'Connell said, referring to a form that would need to be sent to the IRS for a donor to receive a charitable tax deduction.

A valuation for a possible sale is more reliant on a client's forecasts, he said.

"It's all based on what they tell us they can do, for sales and margins," O'Connell said. "Certainly they could make it up.

"If you think you're worth that much for selling purposes, and some bozo is going to pay you $1.4 billion, that's their problem. They have to do their own due diligence."

His firm voided Gerami's valuation and declined to work with him in the future due to the misrepresentation, O'Connell added.

"We said we're not dealing with you anymore, and your valuation is null and void," he said. "We don't stand behind it. You're totally misrepresenting what we're doing to the public, and you can't do it. The public's not smart enough. Who knows what a valuation is?"

What does he gain? It's unclear how much money Gerami has received from investors for Batterson Farms or any of his other business ventures.

The Sun News has only been able to identify a few small investments. An unnamed former associate told FAMU investigators that Gerami initially sold 5 million shares in Batterson Farms to investors for $10,000. Brewer said he invested about $2,000, while another investor told The Sun News he sent Gerami $1,500.

Numerous Batterson Farms shareholders and investors declined to speak with The Sun News, citing nondisclosure agreements that Gerami had them sign. Gerami has cited NDAs frequently during interviews with The Sun News as a reason to avoid answering questions, and NDAs proved problematic at Florida A&M when officials withheld informing board members about the donation prior to the public announcement.

FAMU investigators perceived Gerami's actions as an attempt to defraud investors to enrich himself by using universities to boost his credibility. Others who have known him for years told The Sun News they believe his motive more revolves around a desire for attention.

"He never came across as greedy," said Abbott, noting Gerami never asked her for money. "He just wants attention, that's all he wants. He wants acclimation. He wants self-worth on a grandiose scale."

Gerami, asked about all his former friends and associates who no longer believe he's wealthy, told The Sun News that he hasn't been close to them in years, and they aren't in positions to know what's happening in his business.

"I don't care what they think," he said. "They're not in my business. They are about themselves and only about themselves."

A recent empty nester whose whole life has revolved around caring for her family, Abbott lamented what Gerami could be if he just focused his attention on something positive.

"If he actually put his mind to something good, where it wasn't about him, I think he could be a fabulous person," she said. "I think he could do great things ... if he just stopped being the type of person he is right now, which is extremely self centered, extremely narcissistic.

"All he's done is hurt people."