Celebrities who lost a lot of money on frauds

It was a high-profile case. A Beverly Hills beauty salon manager copied the credit card details of her clients, including Liv Tyler, Jennifer Aniston, Melanie Griffith and Anne Hathaway. She spent as much as $280,000, of which $214,000 was from Liv Tyler. It happened in 2010.

Not everyone knows that Lou Pearlman was the manager and creator of two of the most successful boy bands in history: BSB and NSYNC. Even fewer people know that he was accused of defrauding the two groups - as well as some other bands - of 300 million dollars. Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which he didn't complete because he passed away in 2016.

Dana Giachetto was a financial advisor and stockbroker to Hollywood stars during the last decade of the 20th century. He would end up in prison for misplacing almost 10 million dollars from Courteney Cox, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Stiller, and others, ABC News reported. After being released from prison in 2003, he suddenly died in 2016, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Todd Michael Volpe was a famous art dealer who rubbed shoulders with Hollywood's A-List. In the late 1990s, he would end up serving 28 months in prison,  the New York Times reports, after swindling nearly $2 million from his famous clients. $600,000 of the total, almost a third, belonged to Jack Nicholson.

The case of LeAnn Rimes is a curious one with a happy ending. In 1998, at the height of her success with the album 'Blue', LeAnn Rimes sued her father Wilbur for stealing more than 7 million dollars from her while administering her accounts. As People reported, the legal battle was settled in 2002 and the singer even reconciled with her father. When she married Dean Sheremet, her father attended the wedding and even danced with his daughter!

In 2008, Anne Hathaway saw her ex-boyfriend, businessman Raffaello Follieri, plead guilty to embezzling $2.4 million of funds belonging to the Oscar-winning actress. Follieri had posed as a Vatican official who arranged for investors to gain access to Catholic Church property in Rome. He was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. In 2012, he was released and deported to Italy, according to Page Six.

The famous New York financial advisor Kenneth Ira Starr was arrested after having diverted 30 million dollars from his clients to buy a 140 square metre (1507 square feet) house with a garden and an indoor swimming pool in the heart of Manhattan. Who were his clients? Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese and Uma Thurman. He got 7.5 years in prison, as reported in The New York Times.

In 2009, a list of 13,600 people who had been swindled out of more than 50 billion dollars by Wall Street guru Bernard Madoff came to light. Among the illustrious names were people such as Kevin Bacon, Larry King, and Steven Spielberg. In the biggest fraud in the history of Wall Street, celebrities like Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jeffrey Katzenberg were also affected. Madoff got 150 years in prison and died while serving his sentence in April 2021.

Read about the case of Bernie Madoff

The Canadian singer was involved in a lengthy dispute with her former manager, Jonathan Schwartz, and he finally admitted to having swindled Alanis out of $4.8 million. Schwartz allegedly deposited the singer's money into his own account. Other artists lost another $2 million, the BBC reported. The disgraced music manager was sentenced to six years in prison, according to Rolling Stone.

The Independent reported in 1995 that Sting's financial adviser had embezzled up to £6 million from his client through bogus investments since 1980. After being caught, he had to serve six years in prison.

The '24' star invested nearly $900,000 in the cattle industry in 2007. He did so by contributing the money directly to the account of Michael Wayne Carr, a young entrepreneur who turned out to be a con man. California's chief deputy district attorney, Stephen Maier, told ABC News: "There was no money, nor cattle." Four years later, Carr had to pay back $1.6 million.

Anthony Lemar Taylor got hold of Tiger Woods' driving licence, date of birth and national insurance number at some point in 1998. He used them to buy a car, a 70-inch television and a stereo that he charged to the golfer. Taylor spent $17,000 until Tiger Woods found out and reported him.

The well-known 'Deal or No Deal' presenter is one of the celebrities with the largest amount swindled in history. The events occurred between 2003 and 2007, but the lawsuit was not enforced until relatively recently, in 2017. That year, Noel Edmonds claimed $101 million from Lloyds Banking Group, in a lawsuit that would end up with six employees in prison.

Unique Group, Noel Edmonds' entertainment company, would eventually go out of business, so months later, the presenter increased his claim to $383 million. A year later, Noel Edmonds lowered his demands to $84 million. Finally, in 2019, Lloyds Banking Group and the presenter reached a settlement of $7m, a very far cry from the original claim.

Scammers can even be part of a star's family. Just ask Billy Joel. In 1989, the singer sued Frank Weber, his former manager, for skimming $30 million from his estate. The singer added $60 million in punitive damages. Aas People magazine reported, Frank Weber had been Joel's brother-in-law, close friend and godfather to his daughter.

Little by little, but steadily, Marc Anthony's accountant Kyle Tessiero took a total of $9 million from the singer's money. According to TMZ, it all happened from 2009 to 2017. In the later years of his scam, Tessiero got overly confident and greedy, taking amounts so big that he eventually got caught. He was sentenced to six years in prison in 2019, Page Six reports

In 2001, the British singer had no luck when he sued his agent, Andrew Hayden, for stealing $31 million from him. Due to a lack of hard evidence, the star lost the trial, he did not get back his money, and he had to pay a further $11 million in lawyers' fees. The Guardian reported on the painful defeat in court.

In 2013 Susan Sarandon realised that Richard Francis, a manager she trusted, had taken $10 million from her. He was supposed to have invested it for her in real estate assets, but instead, Francis had deposited the money in the accounts of the companies he ran with his children.