{"id":6564,"date":"2025-06-18T22:56:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fake-rihanna-rum-collab-gets-beverage-company-1m-fine\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T22:56:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:56:05","slug":"fake-rihanna-rum-collab-gets-beverage-company-1m-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fake-rihanna-rum-collab-gets-beverage-company-1m-fine\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake Rihanna Rum Collab Gets Beverage Company $1M Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> beverage startup that once planned to work with Rihanna\u2019s brother will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) more than $1 million for allegedly lying about nonexistent talks to develop an alcohol brand called \u201cRiRi Rum\u201d with the music icon.<\/p>\n

\n\tLong Island-based beverage company The3rdBevco and its founder, Peter Scalise III<\/strong>, agreed to a $1.1 million SEC fine, according to court documents filed Tuesday (June 17). The settlement states that Scalise and The3rdBevco neither admit nor deny the allegations made by the federal investments regulator in a civil complaint docketed the same day.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2022, The3rdBevco publicly announced that it planned to bring on Rihanna\u2019s brother, Rorrey Fenty, as a \u201csenior strategic consultant\u201d to develop a new alcohol brand called RiRi Rum in collaboration with the superstar singer and business mogul (born Robyn Rihanna Fenty).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe SEC says that while it\u2019s true that The3rdBevco did sign a letter of intent to hire Rorrey as a consultant, \u201cthere was never any deal, negotiation discussion or any other contact\u201d with Rihanna or her management team for this supposed rum collaboration.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the complaint, The3rdBevco and Scalise repeatedly lied to investors throughout 2022 and 2023 that they were actively working with Rihanna on the rum product. Along the way, says the SEC, they used Rihanna\u2019s \u201cRiRi\u201d trademark without her permission and included unauthorized Rihanna songs, images and even a fake signature attributed to the artist in investor presentations.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither Rihanna nor Rorrey is accused of participating in this illegal activity. While Rorrey did say he would try to facilitate a meeting between The3rdBevco and Rihanna if brought on as a consultant, the partnership agreement was never finalized, and Rorrey\u2019s letter of intent was ultimately voided without him ever actually working for the company.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe SEC notes that Rorrey complained multiple times to Scalise that The3rdBevco should not have been using Rihanna\u2019s images without authorization or touting the RiRi Rum brand without a deal in place.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to claims about the fake Rihanna partnership, the SEC complaint also accuses The3rdBevco and Scalise of selling unregistered company shares and misusing nearly $900,000 worth of investor funds on personal expenses like tuition, mortgage payments and landscaping.<\/p>\n

\n\tMark David Hunter, <\/strong>a lawyer representing The3rdBevco and Scalise, told Billboard<\/em> on Wednesday (June 18) that his clients \u201care pleased to have the matter resolved and behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRorrey Fenty and reps for Rihanna did not immediately return requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A beverage startup that once planned to work with Rihanna\u2019s brother will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) more than $1 million for allegedly lying about nonexistent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2819,6344,413,443,1323,4020,6343],"class_list":["post-6564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-beverage","tag-collab","tag-company","tag-fake","tag-fine","tag-rihanna","tag-rum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}