The notion of a singing Steve Jobs just did not compute. The producer of an aborted Broadway musical about the rivalry between the Apple co…
The notion of a singing Steve Jobs just did not compute.
The producer of an aborted Broadway musical about the rivalry between the Apple co-founder and his personal computing nemesis Bill Gates lured investors by lying that Mark Zuckerberg’s sister and Microsoft were also backing the venture, a new lawsuit claims.
Thirteen investors who put over $600,000 into the shuttered show “Nerds” are now suing producer Carl Levin for claiming he’d amassed $6.2 million in funding from major backers like the Facebook founder’s sister Randi Zuckerberg — when he’d raised just $200,000, according to court papers.
In February 2016, Levin told the show’s funders that “the financing was all in place” and that “Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg and Microsoft were among the investors,” lead plaintiffs Marc Stanley Goldman and Judith Nath say in their Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
But those “representations were false,” they say.
Levin made the “intentional misrepresentations…to lure investors into contributing capital to Nerds Broadway Limited Liability Company,” according to court papers.
Levin abruptly canceled the musical before previews started in March 2016 as debts amassed and Levin was $100,000 in the red, the suit says. Rory O’Malley, of “The Book of Mormon,” was set to play Gates and Bryan Fenkart, from “Memphis,” would portray his rival Jobs.
Yet the play had nowhere near the $7.5 million it needed to open at the Longacre Theater that April.
Levin tried to cover up the alleged fraud by “publicly falsely attributing the play’s premature cancellation to the ‘last minute’ loss of a ‘major investor’ — when upon information and belief there was no such investor,” the suit says.
“Rather, the failure of the venture was the foreseeable and inevitable result of… reckless financial commitments,” the suit says.
Levin’s cancellation left “a trail of disappointment, anger, and unpaid vendors,” the suit says.
The real investors are suing for their money back plus over $5 million in other damages.
Levin did not return messages seeking comment.
