A Texas man who once promised the largest donation in Coastal Carolina University history before the deal quickly fell apart is now making national headlines for a historic donation in Florida.

Gregory Gerami gave the commencement address during Florida A&M University’s graduation ceremony Saturday before presenting the school with a giant check for more than $237 million. The donation represents the largest donation ever to a historically Black college or university and is nearly twice the Tallahassee college’s existing endowment, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

“And by the way, the money is in the bank,” Gerami said to thunderous applause after the check was presented.

But the excitement has been tempered as questions have been raised about how an ultra wealthy CEO of a hemp farming business with no prior connection to FAMU has come out of obscurity, pledging one of the nation’s largest gifts in higher education history that would transform the school and lives of its students.

Alumni and critics are asking who is Gerami, and whether this transformative gift is too good to be true, especially in light of his failed donation to CCU.

The public skepticism has grown loud enough that the university issued a press release Sunday, offering reassurances that it has “done its due diligence when it comes to this matter” followed by a Monday press conference with reporters.

“While a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) we signed prevents us from disclosing many details ... Mr. Gerami transferred $237,750,000 worth of stocks into our account last month,” the press release states. “As with any non-cash gift received, such as cryptocurrency, real estate, and stocks, it will be converted to cash and recorded appropriately.”

On Tuesday, the university’s board vice chairman told The Tallahassee Democrat he didn’t know about the donation until it was publicly announced and was requesting an emergency board meeting to learn more.

“A donation of this nature requires the highest degree of transparency and inquiry, and to this point that has not occurred,” Deveron Gibbons said in a statement to the Tallahassee newspaper.

Gerami told The Sun News of South Carolina during a phone call Tuesday that he doesn’t understand the criticism because, as the university has reiterated, the stocks — which include agriculture-related ones — have been transferred.

“So whether you look at it and say I’ve never heard of this man before except for the Coastal Carolina story and whatever else, that doesn’t change the fact that the stock is already held at FAMU,” he said. “So where is the question mark if the university foundation is already saying the stock is in the account?”

The Sun News has requested public records from the university that could reveal more about the donation, which is officially from the Isaac Batterson Family 7th Trust.

The Sun News also has a pending lawsuit against Coastal Carolina in an effort to obtain additional documents the university has refused to release related to its deal with Gerami.

While information currently available about Gerami is incomplete, records that The Sun News has been able to compile, including some of his communications with CCU, and interviews with some of his former business associates, reveal inconsistencies surrounding his reported wealth.

The Sun News’ search has also turned up that Gerami’s multi-million-dollar pledges to CCU and Florida A&M are not the only two.

Who is Gregory Gerami?

Gerami, who founded Batterson Farms Corp in 2021, publicly describes himself as a self-made businessman who has overcome huge obstacles, including serious health issues after being born to a single mother dealing with addiction and entering the foster care system, according to the profile on his website and his commencement speech.

Privately, he tells others that he was adopted by a wealthy family and a lot of his fortune stems from inheritance and trust money through his adopted family, according to interviews with his former business associates and records acquired from Coastal Carolina.

A timeline of CCU’s interactions with Gerami, prepared by the the university’s former interim vice president for philanthropy for internal use, shows that a meeting during Feb. 2020 with Gerami, CCU officials and others whose names are redacted convinced CCU that Gerami’s net worth was about $600 million. His cash assets totaled nearly $260 million, with everything else tied up in investments and land.

“It is a combination of family trust money, inheritance, success from (redacted) investment company (redacted), land and real estate,” the timeline states.

But fundraisers were set up in recent years on GoFundMe to help with medical expenses for his adopted mother and funeral expenses for his adopted brother, The Sun News found. GoFundMe is an online crowdfunding platform.

Gerami was living with his then-wife and kids at his adopted mother’s house as recently as Sept. 2020 — after he had pledged millions to CCU — according to Tarrant County court records. The Arlington, Texas home was appraised at $176,000 at the time, according to online property records.

Asked to explain why a family with such wealth would need to organize online fundraisers or live in modest homes, Gerami told The Sun News Tuesday that the money is in a trust with guidelines for how it can be spent or donated and isn’t set up for personal family use.

He also noted he wanted his children to be with their grandmother while they looked for a new place. They were living at her house for about a year, court records show.

Isaac Batterson, the namesake for the trust involved in the FAMU donation, refers to the founder of a small city now called Galena Park, Texas, Gerami confirmed. Gerami appears to be related to Batterson, who settled the area in 1833, through his adopted mother, according to Ancestry.com records.

Gerami said the family’s wealth doesn’t originate from Isaac Batterson, but he declined to tell The Sun News where it did originate. Gerami did say he is one of three trustees of the trust fund, and the other two aren’t both family members.

A former business associate of his shared an email with The Sun News where Gerami suggests his family is also related to the founder of Traveler’s Insurance, James Batterson, and Stetson Hats founder, John Batterson Stetson. But The Sun News was unable to confirm those connections.

While Gerami has told others he prefers to keep a low profile, he did twice run for city council, in Arlington in 2015 and Saginaw in 2019. He received the least amount of votes of any registered candidate in both races, election records show. He also served as a volunteer board member on several committees in those cities.

Entertainment complex and massive hemp farm?

He first appeared on the news around 2017 in Birmingham, Alabama. Gerami, described in the story as a Texas developer, told a local news station he was in the process of purchasing an abandoned mall with plans to spend $480 million to renovate it into an entertainment complex with an indoor water park and resort, laser tag, paintball and bowling alley.

Gerami never purchased the mall, and it has since been demolished and turned into an Amazon distribution center, according to AL.com.

Gerami told The Sun News Tuesday that project ended up not being a good fit due to a combination of high asbestos-abatement costs and an inability of the area to support such a development.

He stayed out of the news until April 2023, when a Texas news station reported that the Batterson Farms Corp CEO had just purchased 114 acres of land in Muleshoe, Texas with plans to turn it into the largest commercial hydroponic hemp warehouse site in West Texas.

But online property records show Gerami never purchased the land he showed the television station. The Batterson Farms project did appear on the agenda in 2023 for the Muleshoe Economic Development Corporation for potential tax abatement incentives, but City Manager Ramon Sanchez told The Sun News the company hasn’t started any work and hardly communicated with the city or corporation since the news story published last year.

Gerami told The Sun News they never told the news station they purchased the property. They had it under contract, but an issue related to an easement encroaching on the land forced them to look elsewhere, he said.

Batterson Farms Corp has had a hemp producers license in Texas since Dec. 2022, but it does not have any lot crop permits, which are required to grow or harvest hemp, a Texas Department of Agriculture spokesman told The Sun News last year.

Gerami said the company has acquired a lot crop permit this year and has an interest in other entities with different licensing. The Texas Department of Agriculture spokesperson did not respond to a request Monday for an update on the Batterson Farms license.

None of the addresses associated with Batterson Farms on file with the agriculture department or Texas Secretary of State are farmland, nor are any owned by Gerami, online property records show.

Coastal Carolina’s ‘anonymous donor’

Prior to the Florida A&M announcement, Gerami’s name most recently appeared in the news when The Sun News was able to identify him last year as the anonymous donor who had pledged a $95 million planned gift to Coastal Carolina University.

The donation, announced during July 2020, fell apart less than four months later when CCU issued a press release terminating its agreement with the donor, citing an unfulfilled early expectation of the arrangement.

Gerami reluctantly admitted he was the anonymous donor after first trying to convince the newspaper he was part of a team representing a different person. Similar to FAMU, he had no clear connection to CCU, though he told The Sun News he was dating someone associated with the university at the time.

During his conversation with The Sun News Tuesday, Gerami returned to referring to the anonymous donor in third person and saying he could not speak about the situation.

The Sun News previously connected the terminated agreement to an email Gerami sent to CCU officials. Shortly before the relationship ended, Gerami alleged he had been subjected to racism and disrespect by an unspecified CCU official.

The newspaper has since learned that administrators expressed consistent skepticism about Gerami’s ability to fund the donation up to and even after it announced the major gift.

A timeline, prepared by the the university’s former interim vice president for philanthropy Bryan Steros, of Gerami’s interactions with CCU, describes multiple requests for additional financial information and speculation as to his financial capacity. University officials encouraged Gerami throughout the process to make a “good faith” gift, including during a conversation a month after the announcement, the timeline shows.

“It is conveyed to Bryan (Steros) that (redacted) is not comfortable making a ‘good faith’ gift to CCU or any university. (Redacted) does not feel (redacted) has to prove that (redacted) can make a transformational gift by making a major gift,” the timeline states under the Feb. 2020 header.

The timeline also shows that the $95 million planned gift was just a small portion of what Gerami had pledged. It states that all necessary parties actually signed a gift agreement in May 2020 for $464 million, but they never announced it “to reduce risk to the university,” the timeline states.

The timeline, provided to The Sun News through a Freedom of Information Act request, is heavily redacted, including the names of people who reportedly vouched for Gerami’s financial status.

The Sun News, through its parent company McClatchy, is currently involved in litigation with CCU in an effort to remove those redactions and receive other documents related to Gerami that the university has refused to release, citing an exemption in state law.

Attempted donations to other colleges and universities

The timeline does state that Gerami told CCU officials he was also working on gift agreements with “several universities.” The only one not redacted is Miles College, an HBCU in Alabama that Gerami also didn’t end up donating to, he previously told The Sun News.

Gerami told The Sun News Tuesday that his team assessed possible donations to about 15 universities and colleges in recent years prior to announcing the Florida A&M gift. In some instances, the university decided it wasn’t a good fit and for others, the trust made that determination, he said.

Gerami reached out to University of Texas at Austin during April 2019, just a month after he first contacted CCU, to try to make a large donation, according to emails acquired through a public records request.

Gerami told UT-Austin’s senior director of gift and estate planning, Doug Duke, that the money would be coming from a land investment deal in Kentucky. CCU’s timeline also mentions that the donation would be coming from a third-party land lease deal in which a company is leasing land from Gerami to harvest hemp for CBD products.

Gerami told The Sun News Tuesday that he “would imagine” the source of the funds that were promised to CCU is different than the stocks transferred to FAMU.

Gerami’s description of the land deal didn’t quell the UT-Austin director’s concerns about his ability to fund a large gift, and he quickly ended the potential relationship, records show.

“As I mentioned during our phone conversation a couple of weeks ago, additional information/personal visit with your financial advisors will not change the University’s interest level in a gift,” Duke wrote in a May 2019 email to Gerami.