Dina Wein Reis In October 2008, 50 federal law enforcement
officers gathered at a six-floor Manhattan Upper West Side townhouse. The agents stood in the rain
outside the Beaux Arts townhouse, the home of self-proclaimed businesswomen, film producer,
and philanthropist Dina Wein Reis. The FBI agents came armed with a search warrant and entered the
home's first floor. The entranceway was adorned with expensive art and ornate French furniture.
They walked further into the home, where large rooms were fabulously decorated with treasures,
stained glass doors, and canvases from some of the world’s most famous artists,
including Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Thomas Hart Benton.
The search warrant allowed the FBI to seize anything and
everything of value in Wein Reis’s home, which was likely obtained through fraud.
They gathered necklaces, watches, a pair of Louis XVI footstools,
two Bugatti throne chairs, a couple of Empire sleigh beds, and a 1920s cast iron vanity.
They called in two big moving vans to take the treasures out of the home.
They didn't finish digging until 3am.
They were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of gold and diamond jewels, renowned art,
and rare artifacts. One FBI agent compared Wein Reis’s luxury townhouse to “King Tut’s Tomb.”
Wein Reis was arrested at the scene on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud.
After a brief fainting scene, she was escorted out of her own home by FBI agents to a local hospital.
Then she was arraigned, fingerprinted, photographed, and sent to federal jail.
Five associates were also arrested and charged for their roles in the fraud ring.
Early Life
Wein-Reis grew up the youngest of three kids in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Her father, Solomon Wein,
was a clothing manufacturer. By her early 20s, Wein-Reis caught the eye of David Ruiz,
a Colombian man from a working-class immigrant family. The two quickly fell in love and married.
He converted to Judaism and changed his last name to Reis. They had three sons together.
Wein-Reis set out to build a fortune that differed vastly from her modest Brooklyn
upbringing. Wein Reis—and the people she surrounded herself with—wore designer clothes,
never repeated outfits, and were in tip-top physical shape. They always
wore the most expensive makeup and accessories.
They worked to inflate the egos of their corporate targets and use reverse psychology to ambush any
forms of critical thinking or suspicion that could have gotten them in trouble. In a meeting
with Wein-Reis in 2006, Robert Gregerson, the president of Polaroid’s instant camera division,
basically begged Wein-Reis to spend time with him and get involved in the Polaroid camera campaign.
Lifestyle
Wein-Reis was known for the luxurious life she led. She had six expensive homes in New York,
New Jersey, and Florida–all of them filled with designer furniture and one-of-a-kind artwork worth
more than $35 million. In a life probably lacking in emotional connection, she filled the void with
pricey status items. Her fortune was estimated at $100 million before the 2008 recession,
which decreased the value of real estate and valuable art. This was also before
her employees tipped off the authorities about the Wein-Reis fortune and facade.
One employee said that Wein-Reis went through assistants like toilet paper. This employee was,
of course, fired. Wein-Reis' behavior went from sweet to angry in an instant.
When one employee wanted to take off Thursday and Friday to attend her grandfather’s funeral,
Wein-Reis called her the following Monday to fire her.
Wein-Reis didn’t have any boundaries regarding what her personal assistants could and couldn’t
do. She even called one of her employees to put a pair of dirty underwear in the laundry
basket. The last straw was when Wein-Reis fired an assistant for breaking her foot.
The assistant turned her in, and then it all came crashing down.
Product Diversion
Product diversion, otherwise known as the gray market, is when items are sold when and where they
aren’t supposed to be distributed. For example, if you get free merchandise from a company giveaway,
you’re not supposed to turn around and sell it for a profit. It's trendy in the industries of
arcade games, cars, cell phones, computer games, electronics, frequent-flyer miles, infant formula,
pharmaceuticals, textbooks, sneakers, and more. People have made careers out of product
diversion and amassed incredible fortunes. Wein-Reis was a gray market extraordinaire.
By the early 1990s, Wein-Reis was a hustling businesswoman, approaching well-known brands
and asking them to sell her products at an almost-offensively discounted price.
It didn’t take long for companies to grow suspicious of her. In 1995,
Hershey Foods, Golden Grain/Quaker Oats, and Warner-Lambert all filed lawsuits against her.
At least five more lawsuits were filed against her by Beech-Nut, Hanover Foods, 8 O’Clock Coffee,
Unilever, and more, accusing Wein-Resi of fraud, diversion, and racketeering.
One lawsuit claimed she scammed 54 companies in 18 states. But this wasn’t enough to stop
her business empire. She went on to scam many more companies out of massive fortunes.
Wein-Reis is the criminal mastermind behind a scam that defrauded millions from some of
the most powerful, wealthy corporations in America. First, she and her employees called
company executives to offer them a lucrative opportunity to sell their products in local,
niche markets. If the people liked the products, she promised to sell the products at a premium
in her exclusive network of 6,500 retailers. To initiate the process, she asked executives to send
a shipment of merchandise, as she promised them access to her “National Distribution Program,”
which didn’t even exist. She and her partners claimed she owned and controlled priceless
business ventures that could distribute, promote, and vastly increase the sales of the business’s
products. Turns out, these so-called invaluable business ventures she owned and controlled
were just shell companies that Wein-Reis incorporated to lend credence to her scheme.
Wein-Reis sold free or discounted merchandise at high prices to unknowing customers for personal
financial gain, defrauding corporations out of tens of millions of dollars. She often
sweetened the deal by treating her corporate connections to first-class airline tickets,
luxury hotels, limousines, and Broadway tickets. The final step was to invite them to one of her
homes, where she would impress them with a butler, huge staff, and rare artwork. Then,
she offered high-paying positions in her empire. But there was no job—it was all a farce.
She got away with it for a long time. She was a savvy businesswoman and surrounded
herself with fellow schemers who continually advised her. Wein-Reis went by several aliases
and even changed the nameplates outside her New York Midtown office between appointments
with corporate execs. One ex-employee said it sometimes got confusing to keep up with
the constant identity changes, but somehow, Wein-Reis’s excellent theatrics pulled it off.
She ran this multi-million dollar crime ring for 15 years before getting caught.
Though product diversion isn’t illegal, per se,
Wein-Reis’s method of acquiring this merchandise definitely was. She lied to companies and claimed
that she was handing out the items for free in lucrative markets, but she was
selling them at a profit. Not to mention the so-called market she touted didn’t even exist.
You won’t be surprised to learn that once the companies sent Wein-Reis their merchandise, they
never heard from her again. It was a fraud, plain and simple—and that’s what got her in trouble.
Fortune 500
The companies that gave Wein-Reis their free or discounted merchandise for distribution
in her National Distribution Program were mainly pharmacies,
grocery stores, salons, and hardware stores—all members of the Fortune 500.
Instead of boosting the victim corporations’ profits by giving out free samples to nursing
homes, schools, ethnic organizations, and charities like she promised, she sold
all of it for personal gain. Then, she used the funds to afford a lavish lifestyle.
Wein-Reis’s targets included nearly 500 companies over the years, including Revlon,
Pfizer, Campbell Soup, Colgate-Palmolive, Eastman Kodak, Jergens, Kellogg’s, Heinz, and Kraft.
Some of her largest profits came from Terre Haute, Clabber Girl, and Roche Diagnostics.
Most of these companies are based in Indiana. Roche sold diabetes-care products at incredibly
discounted prices of 85% to a firm allegedly owned by Wein-Reis. Roche’s lawsuit states
that the firm paid $1.7 million for $12 million worth of merchandise in 2006.
Another one of her so-called firms offered to sell 90% of the goods to Walgreens for a meager $4.6
million, which made Walgreens suspicious and caused them to alert Roche of the shady deal.
Court
Roche’s lawsuit cited $10 million in losses. But it was settled confidentially and out of
court. A spokeswoman for the company was forbidden from talking about it. While
Wein-Reis says her scam operated for eight years, Roche claims it began much earlier, in the 1990s.
In 2008, after her arrest at her six-story New York townhouse,
Wein-Reis was released on bail against prosecutors’ wishes. She was placed on
house arrest at her sprawling $30 million mansion on Riverside Drive.
The 44-year-old scamming mother started volunteering at a nonprofit organization
to show the criminal justice system that she'd turned over a new leaf. The
nonprofit organization helps former prison inmates rebuild their lives,
with a focus on aging parents and children. She was now using
all that passion for making money and defrauding companies to help her community... allegedly.
Sentencing
In 2011, Wein-Reis pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit
wire fraud in a deal with prosecutors. She faced five years in prison,
but this shrank her sentence to 31 months. Sentencing was delayed while Wein-Reis sold
the priceless possessions she amassed through her corporate fraud scheme.
When Reis took the stand, she delivered an emotional plea saying that she'd changed a
lot since 2008, citing the nonprofit organization where she now volunteered. A childhood friend,
Suri Drucker, wrote a letter begging the court for Wein-Reis to be released on bail. But,
it wasn’t enough to keep her out of prison.
In April 2013, U.S. District Judge sentenced her to 10 months behind bars
in connection to the scam that stole billions from corporations. The judge also ordered her to
pay her victims $7 million in restitution—quite a small amount considering the fortune she amassed.
According to First Assistant U.S Attorney Josh Minkler, this $7 million was the largest
white-collar criminal fraud judgment in the history of the Southern District of
Indiana. Wein-Reis was able to pay the $7 million restitution, in addition to a fine,
and forfeited her vast treasure trove of valuables. Minkler said he hoped that this would
help recover the financial damages to the victim companies and also discourage anyone
else trying to engage in similar types of scams, especially at the expense of Indiana businesses.
Wein-Reis remained free while waiting for placement at an area prison. Her attorney,
J. Richard Kiefer, suggested she serve time at the Federal Correctional Institution for low-risk
female offenders in Danbury, Connecticut, about 70 miles from New York City. Kiefer also asked
that her devotion to nonprofit work should be a reason to let her off with only probation. The
judge disagreed, arguing that it would send the wrong message to potential offenders,
who would see that they could execute a scam, live in the lap of luxury for
nearly two decades, and then just get a slap on the wrist.
Aftermath
Wein-Reis has since been released from prison and put her eight-bedroom mansion on the market
for a whopping $65 million. The home was built in the late 19th century by renowned architect
C.P. H Gilbert. The seven-story mansion has views of the Hudson River,
more than 70 windows, an entertaining floor complete with a chef’s kitchen,
and a glass conservatory with 180-degree views. The terrace is big enough to seat 100 people.
By New York City standards, where people live in studio apartments the size of a closet, this
isn’t just a mansion but a castle. The garden houses pear trees and exotic plants. There’s a
staff quarters with a kitchen, a bathroom with a separate entrance, a gym, and a wine cellar.
The fourth floor is adorned with Jacobean paneling and an ornate, tiered fireplace.
Wein-Reis purchased the home in 1996 and leased it for $75,000
per month in 2013 while she was serving time.
In 2021, she paid former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman $20,000 to lobby the Trump
administration to commute her sentence. Even though she had already served her prison time,
Wein-Reis was hoping that Trump could get back some of the money she was forced to
pay in restitution and fines. Unfortunately, things didn’t work so well on that front,
and she was forced to officially list her beloved New York City mansion on the market in 2022.
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And let us know in the comment section if you think she got enough prison time for her crime!