A construction magnate says his much-younger ex-girlfriend has a big debt to pay after cheating on him and then dumping him.
Bruce Elieff, 59, whose New York City and California-based firm SunCal was worth $4 billion before its largest lender, Lehman Brothers, collapsed, is suing Jennifer Alice Armstrong for the total $850,000 he gave her, claiming the money wasn’t gifts but short-term loans.
Elieff, who is now dating a swimsuit model, says Armstrong, then a 34-year-old medical student, claimed she needed the cash to pay for her $160,000 tuition at the University of Hawaii, $10,000 in monthly expenses, $160,000 for cancer treatments and $37,000 to freeze her eggs.
The couple started dating in 2009, but Armstrong broke off the relationship in 2013 after giving birth to twins, fathered by another man, according to Elieff’s fraud suit filed in Orange County, Calif.
That’s when her sugar daddy learned the expenses were “either substantially exaggerated or untrue,” Elieff’s court papers say.
Armstrong, through her attorney Paul Berra, declined to comment. But in a sworn statement filed in court, she says the suit is based on spite.
“I feel that this lawsuit is [Elieff’s] last-ditch effort to continue controlling my life,” the now-doctor says, describing her former boyfriend as “controlling, possessive and very jealous.”
Armstrong says the allegations are “completely baseless” because “everything that he gave to me was a gift . . . no strings attached.”
And Elieff didn’t just cover her bills, he showered his ex with “expensive jewelry, a new Range Rover and other items with a total worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Armstrong says in the papers.
“He also presented me with stacks of cash on occasion, which I usually declined and gave me credit cards with no limits to buy whatever I want. ”
She added, “I was convinced that he was sleeping with a number of women other than me.”
She admits she also strayed but says it was “during a brief period of time that we had broken up.”
The tycoon is suing Armstrong, as well as her friend John Luciano, whom Elieff accuses of taking a cut of the funds.
But Luciano told The Post that Elieff, whose appearance he compared to the cartoon ogre Shrek, can only get young, hot women if he lavishes them with dough.
“It’s ludicrous for him to claim these were loans,” Luciano said. “If all of the money he has given to women over the years were loans, he’d have given out more loans than Bank of America,” he joked.
The suit is merely “sour grapes” because Elieff “can’t get over that his ex doesn’t want him and has moved on,” Luciano said.
A spokesman said Elieff is confident a jury will be convinced Luciano and Armstrong stooped “to the lowest of levels, such as faking life-threatening cancer to accomplish their goals.”