A struggling film producer fleeced a longtime pal of his father’s in an audacious con that netted the 41-year-old more than $7 million over a seven-year period, authorities allege.
The victim, who is identified in court records by the initials “R.P.,” has known the scammer, Justin Berns, since he was four, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Wednesday and reviewed by The Independent.
Berns’s brazen scam revolved around an ongoing financial hard-luck tale featuring phony bank documents, bogus collection agency letters, and a California attorney who never actually existed, the affidavit states.
The West Hollywood resident co-produced the popular web series My Gay Roommate, which ran for three seasons and spawned a made-for-TV movie, which Berns co-executive produced. He produced three or so other projects, in 2016 and 2017, while working in digital marketing at 20th Century Studios, Berns’s LinkedIn profile shows. Federal agents arrested him in Michigan on March 11, but Berns, whose Facebook profile includes photos that show him hobnobbing with various political figures, does not yet have a lawyer listed on the docket and was not able to be reached for comment.
Reached by phone on Wednesday, Berns’s father, who lives in South Florida, told The Independent that he “can’t talk now,” before quickly hanging up.
Berns’s alleged ruse kicked off in April 2017, when Berns’s dad told R.P., a friend of his since 1987, that his son was in the midst of “substantial financial hardship,” the FBI affidavit states. He said he had been helping Berns pay off a mountain of debt, but that he himself had since run out of money in the process, the affidavit explains. (Berns’s father is not accused of any wrongdoing.)
Berns then connected with R.P., telling the Palm Beach County, Florida, resident that “due to his extensive debts, history of overdrafts, and writing bounced checks,” the money his dad had given him was “tied up and frozen by [his] banks,” the affidavit goes on. He said he needed R.P.’s funds to pay off a certain amount of his existing debt, which would subsequently “unfreeze” the funds his father had fronted him, according to the affidavit. Once the money was unfrozen, Berns assured R.P. he would pay back both him and his dad, the affidavit continues.
R.P. agreed to lend Berns what he needed, “believing he was helping” his old friend’s son get back on his feet, the affidavit states.
So, R.P. soon began wiring money according to Berns’s instructions, the affidavit says. However, each time R.P. sent the amount Berns had requested, he would ask for more, floating an array of excuses as to why his accounts were still frozen.
“On some occasions, [Berns] would tell R.P. that his money was received but reversed by the bank weeks later due to his blacklisted status with various banks and credit unions,” the affidavit contends. “[Berns] told R.P. that the banks collaborate with one another, and therefore several banks know of his poor financial history. [Berns] explained that banks use Early Warning Services and Chexsystems as a weapon against consumers attempting to utilize the banks’ services.”
To bolster his claims, Berns regularly sent R.P. screenshots of his accounts, purportedly showing large amounts of money, sitting there frozen, the affidavit alleges. It says he backed these up with correspondence from various collection agencies he claimed were “working on behalf of the banks,” insisting to R.P. that, for these reasons, he “was unable to send and receive money through traditional banking methods.”
Berns told R.P. that he hired a lawyer named Stephen Hernandez to help him fight back against the banks and collection agencies, according to the affidavit. R.P. subsequently began receiving regular emails from Hernandez, who kept him updated on the details of Berns’s financial circumstances, forwarding emails and other documentation from banks and collections firms from his own Gmail account, the affidavit states. One included a promissory note from Berns to R.P., drafted by Hernandez, for $3.9 million, it says.
“According to R.P., Hernandez’s emails to R.P. legitimized [Berns’s] situation,” the affidavit states.
Yet, it maintains, each time R.P. called Hernandez at the number Berns gave him, no one ever picked up the phone. When R.P. tried to confirm Hernandez’s identity for himself, he was unable to do so, as was a California-based attorney he hired to track him down, according to the affidavit.
It says FBI investigators analyzed subscriber and IP login records for the Gmail address Hernandez used to communicate with R.P., and found it had been created around the same time Berns claimed to have retained him. IP connection logs for the Hernandez Gmail account also overlapped with connection logs for Berns’s personal email address, the affidavit states, noting that the contents of Hernandez’s Gmail “only pertain to communications with R.P. and not to any other clients.”
As it turned out, Berns created “Stephen Hernandez” out of whole cloth, according to the affidavit.
“Throughout the investigation the FBI has attempted to verify Hernandez’s existence and status as a California attorney,” the affidavit maintains. “The California State Bar confirmed that there is no record of a person named Stephen Hernandez ever being licensed to practice law in California since the Bar’s establishment in 1927.”
Last March, a letter on TD Bank letterhead that Berns sent to R.P. showed a balance of roughly $6.4 million, and told his benefactor it would release the funds within three to five business days, according to the affidavit. But, the FBI says it contacted TD Bank, which said Berns’s accounts had already been closed at that point, there was no money in them, and confirmed that the letter was counterfeit, the affidavit states.
It says the FBI also got in touch with Transworld Systems, the collection agency Berns claimed was hounding him, having sent R.P. at least 21 letters purportedly from a pair of employees at the firm’s office in Horsham, Pennsylvania, named “R. Saguaro” and “A.L. Maxwell.” Again, TSI executives told the FBI that the company not only had no record of any accounts related to Berns, and didn’t send the letters, it didn’t have an office at that address, and did not have any employees by those names, according to the affidavit.
“Therefore, it appears that these letters were also fraudulently created by [Berns] and sent to R.P. in an effort to further his fraud scheme and extract additional money from R.P.,” the affidavit alleges.
In all, the affidavit says R.P. wired Berns over $7 million between May 2018 and May 2024. Berns “does not appear to have any other course of income,” it contends, adding that, to date, R.P. “has not been repaid.”
“Furthermore,” the affidavit concludes, “an analysis of bank records received… revealed that [Berns] used the funds received from R.P. on international travel, luxury hotels, nightclubs, gambling, and personal living expenses.”
Berns is facing one count of wire fraud, a charge that could put him behind bars for up to 20 years. He remains detained pending an initial appearance on April 2 in West Palm Beach federal court.
