2009 article
it explain the money situation as
@L. Deezy noted
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.9606/title.big-pun-s-widow-breaks-down-the-numbers
read it in full here
“Fifty percent [of Pun’s publishing] was owned by Jelly Bean Benitez, and then the other 50 was split between Pun and Joe – meaning 25 [%] for Pun, 25 for Joe,” she explained. “When Pun passed, there was a check that Jelly Bean had to give Pun. Now, he made the check out to the estate, which was for a $116,000. This was back in 2001, 2002. So the check was made out to the estate. Jelly Bean…he had no idea that Pun had signed a separate deal on the side giving [Joe] a portion of [his 50%] publishing [stake]. Once Jelly Bean gave me that check under the estate of Christopher Rios, then Joe was automatically cut off that deal if they had any deal.”
Liza is unsure if Joe and Pun’s publishing arrangement was still in place by the time Endangered Species was released a year after Pun’s passing, as Pun had renegotiated his deal with Joe before his sophomore release, Yeeeah Baby, and per Liza under the terms of that new agreementt Joe was supposed to give up his 25% stake in Pun’s publishing.
“But, soon after that [Pun] passed,” she noted. “And then once I got [that] advance for the publishing, Jelly Bean automatically gave it to the estate… He said that he didn’t trust anyone, and he wasn’t sure if I was gonna get that money, so he put it under the estate of Christopher Rios. And me, as his wife, I had to go and do the administration paperwork – go to the county courthouse and become the executive administrator of Pun’s estate, which I am presently today.”
So, according to Liza, the monies she received for the recording and publishing advances for Endangered Species totaled $241,000. And that total take for the album was bumped up slightly, to $256,000, a few years later.
“I only received one royalty check in my whole life, which was for Endangered Species back in 2004 for almost $15,000,” she revealed. “Pun’s old lawyer called me like, ‘Oh my God, I thought you would never, ever, ever see a check again.’ [And so then I told him] I need all Pun’s contracts because I wanna… ‘Cause I know when someone passes on there’s certain legal things that you have to do… [And] the lawyer told me basically that he had no contracts. He had no idea where the contracts were at… He looked at me dead in my face and he held my hand and said besides his mother I’m the strongest woman he’s ever met.”
While a quarter-million dollars is arguably a handsome payout for one album, the dispute between Liza and Joe seems to stem not from the funds received for Endangered Species, but from the funds that according to Pun’s widow are still due her deceased husband for sales of his first two albums, 1998’s platinum-certified classic Capital Punishment, and its gold-selling follow-up, 2000’s Yeeeah Baby, which was released less than two months after Pun’s passing on February 7, 2000.
All three of Big Pun’s albums Liza claims have been recouped for various costs (album advances, video expenses, etc) undertaken by the label (a fact she says was unintentionally
leaked to her by an employee at Sony), but she has still yet to receive any royalties for those albums that continue to sell stateside and worldwide. The royalty department at Sony told Liza any issues regarding royalties needed to be taken up with Fat Joe, who according to Liza continues to refuse to provide an accounting for anything regarding Pun. So according to Pun’s widow, as of today it remains a mystery as to who is receiving those royalty checks made out to Christopher Rios.
“I don’t know who gets the money,” said Liza. “I know the kids don’t get anything. Pun doesn’t get paid. And had he been alive, it would not have been happening this way. But, people took advantage of the situation.”
On the surface it would seem the person who has taken the most advantage of the situation caused by a wife with limited legal recourse demanding the royalties due her deceased husband is Big Pun’s onetime manager, Fat Joe.
“Any monies that would go to Pun would go to Joe’s hand first, and he would break Pun off" Liza explained of the “Twinz” rather unique business relationship. “[Joe] was getting 50% of everything. So if [Pun] got X amount of money [from] the advance [from] the record label, [Joe] would get half of that. And…whatever he was getting from Jelly Bean [for publishing], Pun would give [Joe] half of that. And [Pun was] also paying [Joe] manager fees. And then while [Pun] was on the road, [Pun] was paying the guy who was booking up the shows. And also while he was on the road, [Pun] was paying the road manager. So he was paying a lot of people out.”
But even with the alleged greedy business practices on Joe’s part, Liza doesn’t see her husband’s former partner as the sole source of her now almost decade-long struggles in dealing with Pun’s affairs since his passing.
“I don’t put 100% blame on Joe; I put a lot of blame on Pun,” she said. “He shoulda been smarter. He shoulda been wise with the business. And he wasn’t. He swore that these people were gonna take care of me, that I was TS, Terror Squad. Before he passed, I didn’t believe him. I stressed him like, ‘Make sure your affairs are in order…’ I didn’t wanna be bothered with him passing on and everybody now is stressing over the money. I just wanted to be left alone with my kids… And we even got into an altercation, a little fight, because he swore that I was Terror Squad and nobody would ever do me wrong. And that is not the case.
While the debate continues as to how much wrong has been done to Pun’s estate by Joe’s alleged refusal to pony up any proceeds earned from Pun’s first two albums, in Joe Crack’s defense it should be noted that in addition to the $125,000 for Endangered Species directed to Liza, per an interview Liza gave to Forbez DVD last year, Joe at one point, around 2002, also cut her a personal check for $20,000. Liza revealed to DX that she received an additional $44,000 check from ASCAP for Fat Joe’s seemingly gracious gesture of giving Pun co-writer’s credit on Joe’s gold-certified 2001 single “What’s Luv?”
And aside from Joe, responsibility for providing royalty statements for Pun’s albums on Loud Records should arguably also fall to that label’s founder.
“I honestly can say that the last time I spoke to Steve Rifkind [click to read] was the day that Pun died,” Liza revealed. “I spoke to him on the phone in the hospital, and he was asking me if he could give permission to Angie [Martinez of HOT97] to let the world
know that Pun had passed. I have not seen or heard from Steve Rifkind ever since.”
...then I was like 
you can't put the 
Domingo is very close to Chris Rios not to mention he knows the business very well and was close to pun so i could see his annoyance with the situation. 
Pun didn't even like her ass tho...Y'all seen how he hit her with that pistol.
