NFL QB suing La Jolla jeweler
Drew Brees and wife claim they were defrauded and seek $9 million in damages.
SAN DIEGO — New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and his wife, Brittany, are suing a La Jolla jeweler, accusing him of lying to them about the value of diamonds he sold them, defrauding them out of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
According to the complaint filed in San Diego County Superior Court, jeweler Vahid Moradi and his companies, CJ Charles Jewelers and Vahid Moradi Inc., recommended and sold to the couple investment-grade diamonds for about $15 million — which the couple learned last year were worth about $6 million.
The alleged discrepancy came to light after the couple hired an independent appraiser to determine the stones’ market value.
According to the lawsuit, Moradi confessed to Drew Brees that he had charged the couple a substantial markup for the diamonds, but insisted he had done nothing wrong because he charged the price at which he “expected the jewelry could be resold in 10 to 15 years.”
Reached by phone Wednesday, Moradi referred questions to his attorney, Eric George, of the Los Angeles-based firm Browne George Ross.
George provided a statement in response:
“Mr. Brees’ behavior and his belief that he was wronged because the jewelry did not appreciate in value as quickly as he hoped both demonstrate a lack of integrity and contradict basic principles of ... economics and the law.
“He should restrict his game-playing to the football field and refrain from bullying honest, hardworking businessmen like my client.”
One of the couple’s attorneys, Rebecca Riley of the Northridge-based law firm of Andrew F. Kim, said Wednesday that the Breeses weren’t buying the jewelry to wear.
The couple bought the stones solely as an investment to diversify their financial portfolio, and they kept the gems locked in a vault almost all the time.
The stones were in settings with an eye toward resale in the future, Riley said.
The settings in which the Breeses bought some of their colored diamonds were engineered to make the stones appear of higher quality and value than they actually were, the lawsuit says.
For example, the couple in early 2015 purchased a pair of natural pink diamonds solely on Moradi’s recommendation, the lawsuit says.
The couple bought the diamonds for $975,000, which Moradi told them was an “unbelievable” price compared with the $1.3 million being asked for them in mid-2014, but when the couple had the stones appraised this year, they were valued at $176,398, the lawsuit alleges.
Earlier this year, the lawsuit claims, the Breeses had the pink diamonds removed from their settings to prepare them for sale and discovered that the diamonds “were set in platinum painted pink to make the stones appear to be of a much stronger and more valuable color saturation.”
The lawsuit seeks at least $9 million in damages.