Jonathan Braun, whose sentence was commuted by Trump, accused in civil suits of making high-interest loans in violation of court order

Jonathan Braun, the Lawrence man whose 10-year drug and money-laundering sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump, has repeatedly been accused in lawsuits of making high-interest loans that would flout a court order barring him from lending money.

More than a dozen such suits allege he has worked behind the scenes, offering millions of dollars in such loans to businesses, despite a federal injunction permanently barring him from doing so. 

At the same time, Braun is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 10 for multiple criminal violations of his post-prison supervision agreement with federal probation authorities. He also faces misdemeanor and felony charges against him in Nassau County.

After his release from federal prison in 2019, Braun ran afoul of the New York attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission in his operation of a small business loan company. Braun acted as the lender and the enforcer on loans that authorities found had extortionate interest rates. He also illegally accessed client funds and threatened the borrowers with violence against them and their families when they could not make their payments, the attorney general found.

As a result of a lawsuit by the FTC and the attorney general, Braun was forced to pay a $20 million judgment and was permanently barred under a federal injunction from ever lending money again.

"This court concludes that the danger of future violations by defendant Jonathan Braun justifies the issuance of injunctive relief,” District Court Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in his Oct. 7, 2023, order. "Specifically, it is proper in this case to issue a permanent injunction that ... bans Defendant Jonathan Braun from marketing or collecting on certain financing products as well as engaging in debt collection activities.”

Nevertheless, more than a dozen state and federal civil suits, most filed in Manhattan courts, allege that Braun continued to extend loans with interest rates as high as 500% a year, hiding his involvement through shell companies run by his cousin and other court associates, court papers show.

In a November 2024 state lawsuit, father and son Charles and Harrison Grey were sued for defaulting on a $4.5 million loan from Wolf Capital Funding, run by Braun’s cousin Yitzchok Wolf. Under the terms of the loan, the borrower was expected to pay $450,000 a month in interest, according to court records.

"It's predatory lending at its finest,” said Shane Heskin, the lawyer for Grey and his companies. He said his clients were forced into the loan agreement because of a bad business deal in Europe.

He’s hoping to convince a state judge that his client has no obligation to repay the $4.5 million because it was actually lent by Braun, not Wolf, in violation of the judge’s order.

Heskin has been involved with other cases involving money lending in which he said Braun appeared to be acting behind the scenes.

Haymount Urgent Care, a private emergency medical service in North Carolina, sued a group of lenders in Manhattan federal court in 2024, including Wolf. Rakoff, who also handled the FTC case, found the lending entities were “‘shell corporations’ used as Mr. Braun and Mr. Wolf pleased.”

Rakoff’s injunction in the trade commission case against Braun includes "any business for which he performs services, whether as an employee or otherwise and any entity in which he has any ownership interest.”

Attorney Ariel Bouskila, who represents Wolf Capital Funding, did not respond to a request for comment. But in a letter to the judge in the Grey case, he said that Heskin’s argument was "ludicrous.”

"Even if Mr. Braun was connected to the transaction, which he was not, the subject FTC and AG orders do not preclude Mr. Braun from lending money or enforcing against debtors of his,” Bouskila said in papers. 

The FTC said its spokesman could not respond due to the government shutdown. The attorney general’s office declined to comment. A spokesman for the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office did not respond to an email with questions regarding the money lending.

Meanwhile, next month's sentencing on violating the terms of his agreement with federal probation authorities after his release may see Braun staying behind bars for as long as 5 years. 

He was arrested half a dozen times in 2024 and 2025 in Nassau County for various misdemeanor and felony crimes, prosecutors said. As a result, District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto found that he had violated the terms of his release.

Robert Caliendo, Braun's defense lawyer in the Nassau cases, said in an interview: "I'm hoping to resolve the state cases, but I have to see what happens in the federal case first,"

In a largely redacted sentencing submission on the federal probation violations, Braun’s public defender, Kathryn Wozencroft, suggested that past substance abuse was responsible for his latest criminal behavior and argued that he should not be incarcerated so that he may continue his recovery.