Have you seen this man? EaterNY reports that reBar owner Jason Stevens has disappeared since the sudden shuttering of his bar/restaurant/movie theater last Friday.
Several employees claim that the restaurateur ran into trouble with the IRS recently, and a former chef believes that Stevens made off with 27K in cash and 150K in wedding deposits from the Dumbo restaurant and event space. One anonymous reBar worker tells Gothamist: “The state is after him and he is facing a minimum of 2.5 years in prison for $2.5 million dollars in unpaid taxes…The IRS came last year, then this past Wednesday he had an order to pay by Brooklyn Supreme Court but couldn’t get the money.”
Interestingly, the New York Times published an article on reBar and Stevens in 2010:
[Stevens] opened reBar in 2006 after leaving his job as a vice president specializing in mortgage-backed securities for Merrill Lynch. “I was completely miscast,” he said. (And, with his long hair, double nose ring and ponytailed beard, he looks it.) He’s not much of a cinephile — “I’ve been to five movies in five years,” he said — but opened the theater because he thought it would be fun, and fruitful. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he said.
Update: The Brooklyn DA’s office is now investigating the case.
Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
