HIGH LIFE: Fancy wristwatch-wearing moneyman Steve Grivas of Long Island—seen here outside a Melville diner — is being accused of fraud in a messy yarn that includes a Bentley, a strip club and Atlantic City blackjack. (VICTORALCORN.COM)
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Move over, Max Bialystock. Investors in a Long Island brokerage are accusing its owner of masterminding a plot to rival that of Broadway’s best-known crook.
Stephen Grivas, the head of Obsidian Financial Group, is being probed by an industry watchdog over allegations that he carried out a scheme — à la “The Producers” — to sell more than 100 percent of his Woodbury, NY, firm, The Post has learned.
But unlike “Springtime for Hitler,” Bialystock’s absurd musical that ended up a hit in Mel Brooks’ comedy classic, Grivas’ project flopped, and investors are fuming.
It’s unclear what happened to the millions that burned investors, brokerage clients and employees now say Grivas owes them.
But sources said the 45-year-old Jericho resident, who is married with three children, liked the high life.
Grivas drove a Bentley and leased a Mercedes, the payments for which he had Obsidian cover, said a former executive familiar with the firm’s finances.
Obsidian also paid for stretch limos to take Grivas to the firm’s Manhattan branch at least once a week, as well as regular group outings to Sapphire, a Midtown Manhattan strip club, the executive said.
“It was excessive,” said the executive, adding that the bills for strip clubs alone would run between $5,000 and $10,000 at a time.
Grivas, a blackjack player, also frequented Atlantic City casinos — often during work hours and with Obsidian staffers, according to an ex-employee who worked at the firm’s Red Bank, NJ, branch.
Things started to unravel last summer when Obsidian’s roughly 100 brokers across New York and New Jersey stopped getting paid on time, former employees told The Post. By October, some staffers weren’t getting paid at all, they said.
In December, Grivas sought out two Long Island businessmen to inject more than $1 million into the firm. One of the men, who asked not to be identified, said he and his partner gave Grivas $1.24 million in exchange for 50 percent of the company.
The investor said Grivas told him that he owned 100 percent of the firm and would sell half his stake in the deal.
However, according to brokerage registration documents filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra), a man named Qi Huang, who could not be reached for comment, has a 75 percent stake, while Grivas only owns 25 percent.
The alleged overselling of the firm prompted an investigation by Finra, the industry’s self-regulatory watchdog, which declined to comment.
The $1.24 million cash infusion didn’t save the business, either. Obsidian’s remaining 20 or 30 brokers got paid and then took off, sources said.
The brokerage soon went under net-capital requirements, and last month Finra suspended Obsidian for compliance failures.
In a separate case disclosed before the suspension, Finra accused Grivas of improperly withdrawing $280,000 from an $11.2 million fund he had formed to help investors purchase Facebook shares ahead of its 2012 public offering.
According to Finra, Grivas wound up deploying the money to cover a net capital deficiency at Obsidian.
Grivas denies the Facebook allegations “in their entirety” and feels he will be “exonerated completely,” according to his response to Finra.
In a brief call with The Post, Grivas also denied allegations that he oversold his company. He said the $1.24 million cash infusion was an interest-bearing loan due in December 2015 — and not an investment in exchange for equity.
“We got into a worse position getting involved with or meeting this person,” Grivas said of the investor.
Meanwhile, The Post uncovered a discrepancy in Grivas’ brokerage registration, which, if true, could also land him in hot water with Finra.
The regulator’s records list him as a “passive investor” and “managing director” in NY’s eatery chain Canz. But Canz’s co-owner Tim Lorito told The Post it’s not true.
“Stephen Grivas came to us about a year ago with the intention of taking the company public,” Lorito said. “He ended up disappearing and left us hanging.”