Businessman allegedly threatens to ‘ruin’ dock worker, ‘drops his pants’ in heated dispute over yacht parking
A California philanthropist allegedly threatened to kill a dock worker during a heated argument from his multimillion-dollar yacht, before dropping his pants and making several threatening gestures to the employee.
Ajay Thakore, a local entrepreneur in the San Diego area, attempted to dock his Lamborghini yacht at the private Marriot Marquis Marina to pick up one of his employees but was stopped by worker Joseph Holt on Sunday.
“I told him respectfully that he couldn’t be there, and I honestly was hoping to have a conversation with him about his cool boat,” Holt told CBS8. “But yeah, it completely went the other way.”
Thakore, who goes by his social media name, Ace Rogers, was riding on his rare $4.5 million Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 yacht at the time of the daytime dispute.
Holt claimed Thakore became hostile as soon as he was told off.
“It escalated immediately. It was 0 to 100 immediately,” the 21-year-old worker added.
Thakore, the CEO of medical advertising firm Doctor Multimedia, allegedly began to threaten Holt’s life as the luxury speedboat drove away from the docks.
“I will kill you, you know I will kill you, I will kill,” Thakore repeatedly yells, according to the video posted to YouTube.
Besides threatening to take Holt’s life, Thakore claimed to have the power to get the dock worker fired, ripping on the type of job he had.
“I’m a minimum wage worker, he was commenting on that, on my status just because of my job,” Holt said. “He was saying I’m nobody, I’m nothing, I work a silly job.”
“He said that he knows people, he has connections, he can change my life and ruin it,” he added.
During the heated discussion, Thakore allegedly pulled out his wallet and began throwing $100 bills at Holt and into the water, according to the outlet.
Holt said he tried to control himself during the incident and only gave Thakore the middle finger.
“I really didn’t know how to process it. I really was trying to restrain myself from getting fired from my job or stepping out of line. The only thing I did was give him the bird,” he said.
The dock hand blasted Thakore for his actions, especially in a public setting where he stripped nude and showed himself off.
“He had dropped his pants and started to make gestures to everybody watching and me. You can’t act that way in public. It’s just not OK. Especially threatening my life, at the very least. There were women and children there. That’s the most important part,” Holt said.
Thakore claims his outburst started because of a misunderstanding and was sorry for the people who saw it.
“The interaction that occurred yesterday was regrettable. What started as a minor misunderstanding escalated into an argument, and I apologize for my actions and to those who witnessed the unfortunate exchange,” Thakore’s public relations team said in a statement, obtained by KFMB.
Port of San Diego Harbor Police were called to the Seaforth Boat rental dock for “a possible intoxicated vessel operator” but arrived at the marina 10 minutes after Thakore and his boat had left.
The employee who attempted to board the extravagant boat defended his boss’s actions, saying Holt was hostile toward Thakore, and the businessman was only defending his team.
“As I went to kindly step onto the Yacht, I was impeded by two members that work for Seaforth Boat Rental,” Thakore’s employee Jason said on a post to the CEO’s Instagram account.
Jason said he was told to “stand back” the first time he went to step on the boat, and claimed he was forearmed during his second attempt to board the yacht.
“They physically got in my way, the situation became fairly tense, there was a lot of screaming back and forth, extremely confrontational, I didn’t fully understand protocol, as I was going to step onto the boat.”
“As all of this happened, my boss flipped and he’s very protective of me, his fiancée, of his employees.” Jason added. “It was a confusing situation that became very tense and very confrontational.”
Thakore captioned the post saying “there are two sides to every story and it’s easy to paint a picture with edited video clips from cell phones.”
“My employee Jason was being restricted, restrained, and threatened while trying to board my yacht. As a leader, I defend my own fiercely with everything I have, and I will never apologize for that,” the caption read.
