Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash has filed for bankruptcy, saying he has just over $4,000 to his name and owes more than $25 million in tax bills, child support and court judgments.
Dash, who co-founded Roc-A-Fella with Jay-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke in 1994, is seeking to clear his debts through a so-called Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition filed Thursday (Sept. 4) in Florida. It comes almost exactly a year after Dash’s one-third interest in Roc-A-Fella was auctioned off to the state of New York due to these same debts.
According to the petition, Dash has just $100 in cash on hand and a few possessions worth a total of $4,250. These items include $2,500 worth of jewelry, plus a cellphone, clothes and two guns.
Dash’s debts far outweigh his assets. He claims to owe a whopping $25.3 million, $19 million of which is composed of unpaid taxes to authorities in New York, New Jersey and California.
The record executive also says he owes more than $600,000 in child support to two of his exes, Rachel Roy and Cindy Morales, and nearly $5 million to movie producer Josh Webber.
Dash and Webber have been fighting in court since 2019 over a failed partnership to make a film called Dear Frank. Webber won an $823,000 court judgment from Dash in 2022, and the producer filed another $4 million defamation lawsuit against him last year. The second case ended in a default judgment against Dash this past March.
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Last August, New York state reportedly put in the winning $1 million bid to buy Dash’s Roc-A-Fella shares at auction in the hopes of satisfying some of Dash’s hefty debts.
Roc-A-Fella dissolved in 2013, and its primary remaining asset is the revenue stream from Jay-Z’s iconic debut album Reasonable Doubt. That album is expected to keep generating royalties for Roc-A-Fella at least through 2031, when copyright law termination rights will kick in and allow Jay-Z to regain full control.
Reached for comment on Dash’s bankruptcy petition on Friday (Sept. 5), his lawyer Brian Zinn tells Billboard that Chapter 7 bankruptcy is a “strategic decision that allows individuals to reorganize their finances and get a fresh start.”
“Bankruptcy is a legal tool that many successful people have used to restructure their obligations,” adds Zinn.
