Jason Binn, the editor of a luxury magazine, has alleged that he has been falsely accused of abusing a 16-year-old girl.
Binn, 54, was charged with forceful touching of personal parts, endangering the welfare of a minor, and third-degree sexual abuse on Monday.
For the first time since the accusations were filed, the founder and CEO of the glamorous magazine DuJour has angrily denied any wrongdoing and stated that he is the victim of false claims, speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com.
‘Any of us has the potential to become victims. Binn said Wednesday, “I was immediately touched by vengeful actions and was wrongly charged.”
The charges, he alleged, were made “as a direct result of a nasty divorce and custody struggle that lasted over seven years.”
After 13 years of marriage, the New York-based publisher and his wife Haley divorced in 2016.
The next year, the couple sold their TriBeCa condo for $10.75 million. They have a son and two daughters.
He has homes in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, Aspen, Miami, and Southampton, where he is a fixture of the Hamptons’ exclusive cocktail party and celebrity scene.
He’s attended Kris Jenner’s birthday parties and posed for photos beside Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
In Miami’s Art Basel, he mingled with Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, and he partied with Lenny Kravitz and Lionel Ritchie.
The 54-year-old spends more low-key evenings in the Hamptons with Christie Brinkley and has cast himself as a homebody, in bed by 10 p.m.
‘All dressed up and somewhere to go,’ the frequent Instagram user captioned a photo of himself with a happy Katie Holmes only last week. ‘Amazing day — great shot.’
The day before, he had been boasting about his 40-year connection with legendary restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani, whom he met through their respective parents.
Ironically, for a man who is now reportedly on the wrong side of the law, he recently released a video cooperation between civil rights icon Al Sharpton and New York’s previous long-serving police commissioner, Ray Kelly, praising the city’s law enforcement.
Binn began his publishing career with the advertising firm D’Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles at the age of 23, having graduated from Boston University’s College of Communications early and magna cum laude.
He went to Miami in 1992 and started Ocean Drive Magazine. He started Niche six years later, in 1998, and a wave of additional high-end publications followed.
He was selected Ernst & Young’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2005 and was covered in Forbes Magazine’s ‘Forbes 400.’
He was elected into the American Advertising Federation’s ‘Advertising Hall of Achievement’ two years later, and he was named to Crain’s ’40 Under 40′ list of outstanding entrepreneurs in 2008.
He was named Chairman of Niche in 2010, the same year he was named Chief Advisor to Gilt, an online luxury retail brand.
DuJour Magazine, his quarterly publication, proudly caters to a clientele with a net worth of at least $5 million.
Five out of seven requirements must be met in order to acquire a copy of the magazine.
Subscribers must have a net worth of $5 million, liquid assets of $1 million, average home values of $1.5 million, average income of $250,000, annual offline luxury purchases of more than $100,000 or annual online luxury purchases of more than $100,000, and philanthropic donations of more than $10,000.
Binn was profiled by Forbes in August, and the magazine lauded him for his networking skills, citing his concentration on ‘connections’ as the key to his success, which saw his firm expand from five people in 1992 to over 300 today.
However, while his professional success soared, Binn’s personal life crumbled.
‘What you are going to witness on these pages would not be possible without the love and support of my wife Haley, and my children,’ he wrote in the inaugural edition of DuJour. They are my life companions.’
But things didn’t work out, and the couple quietly divorced in 2016, with neither party commenting on why.
Binn married Haley Liebermann, aged 46, at a wedding at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach in December 2003.
Diane and Alan Lieberman, her parents, operate the South Beach Group of Hotels in Miami.