"Where's my fucking money, motherfucker?" Maksud Agadjani, a Diamond District jeweler who goes by "Trax," screams in the face of George Akay of Akay Diamonds, in a video taken last Friday and subsequently posted on Agadjani's social media accounts. He slams a bracelet repeatedly on the counter of the Akay booth, as shocked and amused onlookers watch and whip their phones out. George's brother Freddie Akay hovers in the background, reciting the exchange's address into his phone as if calling 911. "VVS?" Agadjani reads from a receipt, as he and George stare each other down. "Fourteen karat? And you're using my name, you bitch?!"
The Akay brothers were later arrested after a brawl, also captured by multiple camera angles and edited together for posts shared across TraxNYC's accounts on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. (Perhaps you remember Agadjani from his cameo in "Uncut Gems" or from his beef with Scott Disick.) In two videos posted before the fight, Agadjani had accused the Akay brothers of selling a customer a bracelet whose value they misrepresented, while pretending to work for his business, TraxNYC. In one of the videos, which features Agadjani sitting down with the bemused-looking alleged customer, he said he did the honorable thing and refunded the customer $22,000, and then demanded to be made whole by the Akays. Whatever happened to spark it, Friday's melee left Agadjani in the hospital with an angry red indent on his neck, where he claims Freddie tried to strangle him to death with his own gold chain.
The machismo has intoxicated the internet. Bald, shirtless, and tattooed men have recapped the incident, calling Agadjani "the hardest jeweler in the Diamond District—not Vookum, not Moses, not Benny," a reference to other dealers-slash-influencers who, like Agadjani, have brought social media showmanship to the Diamond District, and to an eager audience hungry for hustle porn. DJ Akademiks has recapped the crashout to his Twitch chat, karate TikTokers streamers have memed it. Rappers like BossMan Dlow and Comethazine, the guy who walks up to people and asks them what they do for a living on TikTok, and aggregators like World Star are in the Instagram comments applauding Agadjani. It's how you stand on business.
It's the perfect advertisement, in other words, for a business that most of us who don't buy a Rolex more than once a lifetime, if that, consume solely through movies and now, social media. But how is it all playing out on the ground?
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