For the Love of Money, has FAMU been fooled?

Two days ago, I was talking to a Florida A&M University graduate about FAMU’s progress. The alum rattled (hehe) off all of the ways that FAMU was doing well. The alum did say that one weak spot was the endowment. With FAMU’s roster of successful alumni who are leaders in law, corporate America and politics, the alum felt that their endowment should be a lot higher than its current $140 million level.

I thought that $140 million was pretty respectable, but I agreed; FAMU probably could and should do much better. The very next day, FAMU announced that Gregory Gerami, CEO of a hydroponic farming and hemp plastic company in Texas, announced a record $237 million donation to FAMU from the Issac Batterson 7th Family Trust. According to HBCUGameday.com, “a video recorded at the graduation ceremony shows FAMU president Larry Robinson behind the podium as the check is revealed….. the song “For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays plays in the background as the crowd erupts in applause as the size of the donation is realized by the crowd.” 

As a HBCU alumnus and devotee, my ears perked up. A donation of this magnitude would be the largest contribution to an HBCU EVER. It's more than the endowment of every HBCU, save Howard and Spelman. It would be a game changer of the highest magnitude and according to the Tallahassee Democrat, “adds to the FAMU Foundation’s current endowment value of $160 million and will bring it up to nearly $400 million.” 

But who is Gregory Gerami? Someone who gives a quarter of a billion dollars must be a billionaire, right? He must live in the lap of luxury and have a history of philanthropic giving? He must have a veritable track record of success in business? A few minutes on Google shows he has none of the above. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, he says he did not attend FAMU or graduate from college, but he started off his career by building a landscaping business and has also worked in property management and economic development consulting before establishing his farming company. 

He ran for city council in Arlington, Texas and Saginaw, Texas, coming in last place in both races. For a would-be billionaire, his online presence is strange. There is no mention of the Issac Batterson 7th Family Trust online, anywhere, before this “contribution.” The Batterson Farms IG page has 5 posts and 74 followers. The website has a Gmail email account. He has five LinkedIn profiles, all sketchy and littered with misspellings. 

Courtesy: battersonfarmscorp.com/investors

Previous attempted donations to Miles College and Coastal Carolina University came to bizarre conclusions. At Coastal Carolina University, he was slated to donate $95 million. Why? Because he had “tax things” to offset, and, I kid you not, had a girlfriend who went there! An investigation by The Myrtle Beach Sun News found that he changed course because he felt disrespected by university officials, accusing them of racism, which they have denied.

“If you can’t hold to y’all word and verbal agreement as such is in Alabama and Texas the time of the agreement, then I have nothing else to say to ccu or to deal with ccu,” Gerami wrote to former CCU President David DeCenzo and Bryan Steros, former interim vice president for philanthropy, in a September 2020 email with the subject line “Respect and honor.” “I’ve put up with drama lack of communication racism and comments back and forth no reply,” the email concludes. About seven weeks later, the university sent out a press release that it was terminating its agreement with the donor, citing an unfulfilled early expectation of the arrangement.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Gerami said it wasn’t his tenuous ties to the university that made him back off but rather interactions that he believed were racist and inappropriate personal questions from officials that he felt were not relevant to the donation.

I just decided enough is enough, and this isn’t working for me,” Gerami told the newspaper. “I have no ill feelings toward Coastal. I just think we were doing too much and weren’t dating long enough to be spending that kind of money on dates, if that makes any sense.” 

A little more digging shows that Gerami served time in prison for an assault charge in 2022 and has a $1,500 judgment. He has $237 million for FAMU and can't pay a $1500 judgement?

I could go on about how Batterson Farms Corp has no searchable contracts in the state of Texas or with the federal government, or how there are no profiles of the family trust on any nonprofit database or with the IRS, or with the Comptroller of Texas. What you can find about Gerami is sparing and what is available on his company’s website is outright unimpressive.

But what would it matter now that the word is out worldwide on FAMU’s transformational gift?

FAMU has gone out of its way to tell people that the ‘money is in the account.’ A philanthropist no one has ever heard of with the kind of cash to move nearly a quarter-billion dollars in one transaction is rare in higher education, even among ultra rich donors who pledge large sums and usually after long period of relationship building.

This isn’t like Mackenzie Scott and the millions she’s given to a number of HBCUs. People know who she is, where her wealth comes from and how HBCUs came to be a point of focus for her giving. Robert Smith is the wealthiest Black man in America and with a single gift, Gerami as a virtual unknown with a company he founded three years ago outpaces Smith’s giving?

If you believe there’s a profile in which Black billionaires tend to fit — Reginald Lewis, Bob Johnson, Robert Smith, Jay Z, Oprah, Rihanna, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tyler Perry, — Gerami as a would-be billionaire could not be more outside of that box and certainly couldn’t be the first to see in FAMU what others have missed. His commencement speech, given in a mask and which at times seemed rambling and rushed, wasn’t what you would expect from such a historic moment and personal opportunity for global recognition.

It is hard to avoid the feeling that this “donation” will go down as one of the biggest scams in higher education history. If the money is indeed in the bank, I wonder if that will be shown to be false in a few days? If the money is there without issue, then I’m wrong and the university has a foundation for great prosperity by way of an ultra rich, unknown business tycoon who seems to care little about how he or his business would benefit from such a bold philanthropic effort.

But if this turns out to be a scam, the entire university leadership should resign for a massive lack of vetting.

A quote by Alfred Molina reads that: “Good cons are all based on the victim's need, and the successful con artist is the one, I guess, who can exploit that. I remember reading something about this, that one of the great traits of confidence tricksters is the level that they flatter their victim.” All of the evidence begs the question of if FAMU has been flattered and fooled by a confidence trickster.  

Florida A&M University is one of our nation’s most prominent HBCUs. It has an eminent history, a distinguished alumni roster, and is the nation’s top public HBCU. At one point, FAMU perennially led the nation in recruiting black National Merit Scholars and National Achievement Scholars, consistently beating out Howard and Harvard Universities. FAMU is a national leader in the production of black undergraduates who earn doctoral and professional degrees. It’s business, pharmacy, and engineering schools are powerhouses. Their graduate school feeder program is legendary. More black congressional representatives claim FAMU as their alma mater than any other university.

On a more personal note, the most successful couple I know both earned their undergraduate degree from FAMU during the famed Fred Humphries era. So I'm a fan of FAMU and believe it to be a treasure for Black America.  

The rush to align this great history with provable nonsense is a potential disgrace of huge proportions. I truly hope that I am wrong but common sense tells me, and should have told FAMU President Larry Robinson, that even the offer is too good to be true.

In closing, I'll end with the last stanza in the O’Jays For The Love of Money hit song. 

Don't let, don't let, don't let money fool you 

Money can fool people sometimes People!

Don't let money, don't let money change you, 

It will keep on changing, changing up your mind. 

*Correction - An earlier version of this editorial noted that a GoFundMe campaign was launched for the namesake of the Isaac Batterson 7th Family Trust. That campaign was not for Isaac Batterson, but Isaac Gerami. The Education News Flash regrets the error.