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Prior to announcing a $237 million donation during a commencement ceremony last month, Florida A&M University officials received notice from the donor’s bank that the gift may not be legitimate, The Myrtle Beach Sun News reported Tuesday.
Within days of publicizing the gift from Gregory Gerami, who claims to be a wealthy hemp farmer from Texas, skepticism about the gift had supplanted the excitement. Critics of the university noted that a quick internet search revealed the limited, amateur online presence of Gerami, his company, Batterson Farms Corp. and the Isaac Batterson Family 7th Trust, which underwrote the donation.
In the days that followed, it was revealed that only a handful of people in FAMU’s leadership knew about the gift prior to the announcement and that the university did not properly vet or valuate the donation, which came in the form of private stock.
Larry Robinson, FAMU’s president, has since put the gift on pause, and FAMU’s Board of Trustees also unanimously approved an external investigation of the donation.
The Florida Board of Governors recently told FAMU that it would supervise that investigation, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Robinson, who knew about the gift prior to the ceremonious announcement, has since publicly admitted that he “wanted it to be real and ignored the warning signs along the way.”
Now, documents obtained via a public records request by The Sun News, which previously reported that Gerami backed out of a $95 million donation to Coastal Carolina University in 2020, shows that one of those warning signs came directly from Gerami’s bank.
Kirk Bell, a senior vice president at Raymond James Financial Services, an independent investment bank, wrote to FAMU on April 12, roughly three weeks before Gerami delivered the keynote speech at FAMU’s commencement and presented the university with a jumbo check.
“Effective April 10th, 2024, Raymond James will no longer provide a value for the securities in Mr. Gerami’s account and no longer stand by the verification of deposit letter you may have received,” the letter said. “To the extent that Mr. Gerami has or does provide you with official account statements from Raymond James, we do not believe the pricing of certain securities was accurate.”
Gerami told The Sun News on Monday that he stands by the valuation of the stocks but that “it’s based on an internal report and no third-party valuation has been completed.”
The Sun News also reported that Erich Horner, a gift officer at North Carolina State University, emailed Shawnta Friday-Stroud, FAMU’s now-resigned vice president and executive director for university advancement after the gift announcement, warning her that he believes Gerami is “a fraud and I’m happy to discuss further,” and that the donation was likely to unravel.
Horner, who was working at the University of Mississippi when Gerami contacted the university about a donation, also said he knew of five other schools Gerami had approached about a donation, including Miles College in Alabama and the University of Texas at Austin, but “it always falls through.”
FAMU did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment about these revelations Tuesday afternoon.
