Miami con man Justin Jackson and his wife Angel Agarrat were booked into Miami-Dade County jail this afternoon for the second time in three months on felony fraud charges. Jackson has a history of posing as the manager of famous artists and using his pretend platform to extract goods and favors from other celebrities. He was once arrested for posing as Madonna’s manager and stealing $2.4 million in jewelry, and he served two years in prison.
This May, he was arrested for allegedly pretending to be Adele’s manager and trying to score free concert tickets. Prosecutors filed a new round of charges against him this afternoon after they uncovered evidence that show he’d allegedly kept his scheme up and tried to trick a variety of sports and entertainment stars. David Ovalle of the Miami Herald first reported on Jackson’s arrests.
For example, in June 2016, he impersonated Adele’s manager by creating an email account in his name and convinced Fabolous’s reps to give him and his wife backstage passes. Once Fabolous’s management figured out they’d been defrauded, they kicked Jackson and Agarrat out of the venue and cops later found photos of Jackson posing with Fabolous, which helped them corroborate the fraud allegations.
The first scheme that cops highlighted began in January 2016, when Jackson, through a dummy email account with Adele’s manager’s name on it, asked Carmelo Anthony’s reps for shoes for a supposed charity concert in exchange for tickets.
Swann didn’t bite. Later that month, Jackson emailed a former agent with the Wasserman Media Group, whose firm represents Russell Westbrook, Jrue Holiday, others. He emailed back an expressed some interest in donating on behalf of Lauren Holiday, although he never sent any shoes and the exchange ended after Jackson gave shipping info.
Jackson also used the email account to ask for sunglasses and other favors from stars like Drake, and nobody helped him out until he hit up CAA, the prominent sports agency. He repeated his line about a fake offer for passes in exchange for shoes, and even set up a fake domain and email account for Lionel Messi’s agent to add another layer to the ruse. Eventually, they shipped him a few pairs of shoes.
The last star Jackson tried to trick out of merchandise was Big Sean, to whose reps he sent an email to on April 19, 2017, which was promptly flagged as fake. Police discovered that Jackson had set up a network of fake domain names and email addresses which he was using to contact agents of the famous people he was attempting to rip off. After he hit up Kendrick Lamar’s manager in May 2017, they alerted Adele’s real manager, who was quickly to identify Jackson’s emails as fake. Police then posed as Lamar’s management and lured Jackson and Agarrat to the concert, where they were arrested. In addition to the fraud charges, Agarrat and Jackson also face counts of identity theft and grand theft. You can read the entire arrest warrant below.
Additional reporting by Lauren Theisen.