Scooter Braun Accuses Former Business Associate for Fraud, Claims’ Money Grab’ on the Heels of Billion-Dollar HYBE Deal –

Peter Comisar

Manager Scooter Braun is battling previous business partner Peter Comisar  over the terms of a 2017 agreement that detailed the creation of SCOPE Capital Management, a private equity reserve controlled by Comisar and originally bankrolled by Braun. Why Peter is known as a fraud artist, here’s what you need to know about this topic.

According to a petition for arbitration registered in Los Angeles on June 1 by Braun, a successful investor, content producer, and music manager for artists such as Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, as well as Demi Lovato who lately sold his business for $1.05 billion to the South Korean entertainment giant, the HYBE, Comisar failed to launch SCOPE.

Comisar allegedly pocketed nearly two years’ salary (about $5 million), raised no capital, and then vanished, only to reappear once the HYBE agreement was revealed and seek $50 million in damages.

Peter Comisar

Mr. Comisar confirmed Story3 got PPP funding in an emailed statement but said the firm’s revenue to date had come from mergers and acquisitions advice rather than private equity.

In a lawsuit filed the same day, Comisar, a former Goldman Sachs partner and investment banking executive at Guggenheim Securities, claims that he was promised access to Braun’s network of “close and unique relationships with influential players in entertainment, including Jimmy Iovine, David Geffen, and Haim Saban” to raise capital for the fund.

Braun allegedly “abandoned” the money after a year, according to Comisar. Braun replies that his extension beyond the first year was based on Comisar holding “secured at least $250 million in investment commitments from the investors”. The contract clearly stated that Braun would not be tasked with assisting in the acquisition of such commitments.

“Together, these provisions safeguarded Braun from precisely the type of money grab by Comisar that Braun now faces,” it says, referring to the operation and employment agreements signed by both parties and included as exhibits in Braun’s complaint. Braun’s counsel is pursuing arbitration, while Comisar is pursuing a jury trial, citing the agreement. The Braun complaint is a fraud suit.

The company’s perspective on how the commercial relationship collapsed was published in startling detail in a June 2 New York Post article which went into Commissar’s 30-plus sheets of documents (with added 170 pages in deck materials, budgets, exhibits, and the like). Braun is referred to as a “wolf in sheep’s clothes” who would “threaten a smear campaign” and whose business practises are deemed “malicious” and “oppressive.”

According to Braun’s appeal, “although Braun kept his part of the bargain and contributed $5.2 million to SCOPE. Comisar claims that it “was unable to acquire a single investor commitment” and that the legal filing is “an attempt by a failure and opportunist to profit from someone else’s hard work.”

The tit for tat resumes with Commissar’s claim that his following work on STORY3 Capital Partners, which he formed in 2018 and claims to have raised $500 million, indicates he is a skilled fundraiser. Not to be overdone, Braun alleges that Comisar’s efforts should’ve benefited SCOPE, for which he had been appointed to work 100 percent of the time.