{"id":7705,"date":"2025-09-06T22:08:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/roc-a-fella-co-founder-has-25m-in-debts\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T22:08:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:08:57","slug":"roc-a-fella-co-founder-has-25m-in-debts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/roc-a-fella-co-founder-has-25m-in-debts\/","title":{"rendered":"Roc-A-Fella Co-Founder Has $25M in Debts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tR<\/span>oc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tDash, who co-founded Roc-A-Fella with Jay-Z and Kareem \u201cBiggs\u201d Burke<\/strong> 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\u2019s one-third interest in Roc-A-Fella was auctioned off to the state of New York due to these same debts.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAccording 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tDash\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tDash and Webber have been fighting in court since 2019 over a failed partnership to make a film called Dear Frank<\/em>. 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. <\/p>\n

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\n\tLast August, New York state reportedly put in the winning $1 million bid to buy Dash\u2019s Roc-A-Fella shares at auction in the hopes of satisfying some of Dash\u2019s hefty debts. <\/p>\n

\n\tRoc-A-Fella dissolved in 2013, and its primary remaining asset is the revenue stream from Jay-Z\u2019s iconic debut album Reasonable Doubt<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tReached for comment on Dash\u2019s bankruptcy petition on Friday (Sept. 5), his lawyer Brian Zinn <\/strong>tells Billboard<\/em> that Chapter 7 bankruptcy is a \u201cstrategic decision that allows individuals to reorganize their finances and get a fresh start.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBankruptcy is a legal tool that many successful people have used to restructure their obligations,\u201d adds Zinn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5281,3896,4390,2851],"class_list":["post-7705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-25m","tag-cofounder","tag-debts","tag-rocafella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7705","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=7705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}