A billionaire is taking a designer to court over claims he was overcharged by millions of Euros for fake goods.
Jan Koum, the founder of messaging app WhatsApp, has accused renowned interior designer Remi Tessier of ‘brazenly’ exploiting their 10-year working relationship by supplying fake goods and overcharging him.
The tech billionaire, 48, submitted documents to a federal court in Manhattan in which he described Mr Tessier’s actions as a ‘pattern of predation’.
Mr Koum also says he plans to bring a criminal fraud case against Mr Tessier in France.
Mr Tessier renovates the homes and yachts of some of the wealthiest people in the world via his Paris-based studio Dernier Etage SARL, where he employs 15 staff.
But he has now been accused of supplying fake goods or charging eye-watering mark-ups when renovating Mr Koum’s luxury homes in St Barts and Malibu, as well as two superyachts.
In one example, Mr Tessier allegedly charged €19,550 (£17,000) for a luxury chair which would have cost €12,400 (£10,800).
Mr Koum alleged he was charged €1,731 (£1,511) for an 84-piece set of glassware that was actually worth €1,079.84 (£942).
He also said he was charged €642,000 (£560,000) for a set of pashmina carpets which were in fact ‘fakes’ made out of ‘cheap synthetic materials’ and worth only half that price.
Other examples include a set of 16 steak knives with luxury Palisander wood handles which were charged at €66 (£57) each. The knives were allegedly made of a synthetic material and cost less than €35 (£30) each.
And two supposedly ‘custom’ sofas billed at €42,900 (£37,500) each were not actually unique and were worth just €20,580 (£17,900), it’s been claimed.
Mr Koum, who sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19billion in 2014, hired Mr Tessier to design one of his homes in California in 2015, MailOnline reports.
The interior designer then worked as the lead designer on at least eight more of Koum’s properties over the next decade, including two adjoining properties in Malibu worth $100million and $87million, an $80million compound in Atherton, as well as homes in Manhattan and St Barts.
Mr Tessier also worked on Mr Koum’s two superyachts: the 328ft-long $220million superyacht Moonrise 1 and its 331ft sister ship, Moonrise 2, worth $330million.
The court documents said: ‘From the outset, however, and unbeknownst to Koum, Tessier treated Koum not as a client but as a target.
‘Tessier cultivated his image of discretion, exclusivity, and sophistication to gain Koum’s trust while deliberately constructing a closed system that gave Tessier unilateral control over design and procurement with zero oversight.
‘Unbeknownst to Koum, Tessier’s entire system was designed to enable him to steal, over and over again.’
Mr Tessier was Mr Koum’s ‘exclusive’ design consultant and had full control of sourcing furniture, fixtures and equipment.
But Mr Koum’s suspicions were raised last year when his outside accounting firm conducted an audit and raised concerns about Mr Tessier’s billing.
The court documents continue: ‘Tessier had engaged in a brazen, sprawling, and secretive fraud against Koum, and potentially other clients as well.
‘Although the evidence available to Koum is limited by Tessier’s secrecy and subsequent obstruction, what Koum has been able to obtain to date reveals that Tessier systematically abused his position to surreptitiously enrich himself at Koum’s expense, employing numerous schemes to defraud Koum at every turn.’
The documents said Mr Tessier artificially inflated the price he paid for items, or failed to pass on substantial trade discounts – meaning he allegedly charged far more than the agreed-upon 10-20% markup in addition to the flat fee he charged.
One invoice, which Mr Koum was able to obtain directly from the merchant, showed Mr Tessier received a 56% discount. The invoice was allegedly doctored to make it seem like he only received a 10% discount.
The filing states that any money Mr Koum gets from his case will be donated to a charity in France.
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