Hollywood's dark side exposed! We're diving into shocking stories of celebrities who were deceived, scammed, and manipulated by con artists, fraudsters, and terrible people who took advantage of their fame and trust.
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00:00How did you get caught up in the whole Madoff thing?
00:02Uh, you know, it was recommended that we put, you know, some money with him.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining our picks for the infamous times a celebrity
00:12befriended or conducted business with someone only to discover they were a terrible person.
00:17Thought the only way to dig myself out of this hole was to pull this event off and build a brand.
00:23Lou Pearlman's Pop Band Scam
00:25Inspired by the success of New Kids on the Block,
00:28Pearlman went into the music industry as a manager.
00:30After a talent search, he had his first band, the Backstreet Boys.
00:41They were soon followed by NSYNC, Aaron Carter, and O-Town, among others.
00:45However, in 1998, the Backstreet Boys issued a lawsuit against Pearlman.
00:49The group had only made several hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to Pearlman's
00:54Backstreet's out there bringing in millions and millions of dollars,
00:57and then they find out that Lou has taken $10 million for himself,
01:02and left $300,000 for them to split amongst themselves.
01:07They said they began to feel like indentured servants.
01:10Further lawsuits were later issued by NSYNC and Carter for similar reasons,
01:13all three of which were settled out of court.
01:15In 2007, after officials announced Pearlman had been running a Ponzi scheme,
01:19he fled, but was soon arrested.
01:21In 2008, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail,
01:23but passed away in 2016 after only serving a portion of his sentence.
01:27Lou Pearlman was serving his sentence in Texarkana, Texas. He was 62 years old.
01:33Cristiano Ronaldo and the fraudulent travel agent
01:36In 2021, the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Noticias
01:40announced the country's most famous football star had been the victim of fraud.
01:44Between 2007 and 2010, Ronaldo used the services of travel agent Maria Silva to make 200 trips,
01:50even giving her a virtual credit card and PIN.
01:52However, she soon took advantage.
01:54Silva was getting other clients to pay her directly,
01:56and then charging Ronaldo's card to the company to hide her crimes.
02:00He lost around $340,000, or 288,000 euros,
02:04while his agent, Jorge Mendez, lost $20,000, and fellow footballer Nani, $2,000.
02:10In 2017, after confessing to her crimes,
02:13Silva was handed a four-year suspended sentence in order to repay the stolen amounts.
02:17The real Christophe Rocancourt
02:19Known as Eric Rockefeller, Christopher de Laurentiis,
02:22Christopher de la Renta, or any one of the other aliases he used,
02:25Christophe Rocancourt moved from his native France to the U.S.
02:28and began rubbing elbows with the rich and famous in the 1990s.
02:32He splashed cash on luxury restaurants to convince guests to invest in one of his business ventures.
02:36Rocancourt even lived with Mickey Rourke,
02:38and purportedly got Jean-Claude Van Damme to agree to produce his next movie.
02:42However, the Frenchman was a con artist and an imposter, and he'd been stealing money.
02:46In 2001, after fleeing from arrest the previous year, Rocancourt was tracked down in Canada.
02:51In 2003, he was sentenced to three years and 10 months and fined $9 million.
02:56Afterward, Rocancourt returned to France, where further accusations followed him.
03:00Dana Giacchetto, money manager to the stars
03:03Armed with his own company, the Cassandra Group,
03:05Giacchetto began rising in high society after meeting talent agent Jay Maloney,
03:09who opened the door for the stockbroker to work with the rich and famous.
03:12I had more clients than I could ever wish for.
03:17I made friends with a lot of my clients, which were amazing creative partnerships.
03:22Leonardo DiCaprio was one of his clients. He'd even stayed in Giacchetto's loft for months.
03:26Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz, and Ben Affleck are just some of his other
03:30clients as he raked in fortunes and threw lavish parties.
03:33Dana was the money manager to A-listers in the 90s,
03:36and apparently Leo's best friend during the pinnacle of his fame,
03:39until he misappropriated nearly $10 million.
03:43However, in 2000, Giacchetto was arrested for fraud.
03:46He pleaded guilty to stealing up to $10 million.
03:49However, prosecutors believed it was a number over $20 million.
03:53Giacchetto was sentenced to 57 months in jail.
03:55What do you think you did wrong?
03:57Well, I know what I did wrong, and I admitted it in court.
04:00I mean, what I did that was wrong was a violation of the Advisers Act.
04:04In 2014, he received two years of probation after another fraud charge,
04:07but ended up passing away in 2016.
04:10Naya Tawiyah Sisopo catfished Montai Teo
04:13Before he broke into the NFL and was still playing college football for Notre Dame Fighting Irish,
04:17Montai Teo announced heartbreaking news.
04:20The star player whose heartbreaking loss of his girlfriend just before a big game
04:24made national headlines and made Montai Teo the individual story of the college football season.
04:30In the matter of a day, his grandmother had passed away, and he'd lost his girlfriend,
04:34Linnea Kakua, to leukemia after she was diagnosed following a serious car accident.
04:38However, a report in early 2013 found that Kakua didn't exist.
04:43And according to the sports website Deadspin, which broke the story,
04:46Linnea Kakua was a hoax, and the picture we all saw of her was actually another woman
04:52who was very much alive and says she doesn't even know Teo.
04:56Instead, a fan who now goes by Naya Tawiyah Sisopo had been pretending to be her,
05:01effectively catfishing Teo into a fictitious relationship despite never meeting in person.
05:06Naya told the college star she was Kakua's cousin and befriended him too.
05:09Tawiyah Sisopo later admitted on Dr. Phil how she conducted the hoax and was in love with Teo.
05:14I just wanted to help him become better.
05:19The Scientology Ponzi Scheme
05:20In 1999, at his 50th birthday party, Reed Slotkin, the co-founder of the internet service provider
05:26Earthlink, had his high status all but cemented thanks to greetings and praise from Kevin
05:30Costner and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet, not everything was as it seemed.
05:34As a member of Scientology, Slotkin used his position and connections to embezzle
05:38money as part of a Ponzi scheme. He often targeted fellow Scientologists such as Giovanni Rabisi and
05:44Joe Pantoliano, taking over $593 million from 800 investors within 15 years. Former venture
05:50capitalist John Poitras alone lost $15 million. In 2003, Slotkin was sentenced to 14 years in
05:57prison. He was released in 2013 but passed away soon after in 2015.
06:01Celebrity endorsements of FTX
06:03In 2021, the cryptocurrency exchange company FTX was flying high. On top of bringing in a fortune,
06:10they had celebrities endorsing them and starring in their commercials.
06:13It's FTX. It's a safe and easy way to get into crypto.
06:17Eh, I don't think so.
06:19NFL legend Tom Brady and then-wife Gisele Bündchen,
06:22as well as NBA icon Shaquille O'Neal and Stephen Curry, were involved. However,
06:27due to fraud conducted by Sam Bankman-Fried and others, the company folded in 2022 as
06:32legal cases were issued. Bankman-Fried is now facing a dozen federal charges in Manhattan court
06:37related to the collapse of FTX and Alameda.
06:40With the amount of shares Brady and Bündchen had in FTX, they lost approximately $45 million
06:46when it went bankrupt. Many of the celebrities who endorsed the company have been sued by clients.
06:50In 2024, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years.
06:53Sam Bankman-Fried's regret. Three days after he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison,
06:58the man behind one of the biggest financial frauds in American history told ABC News he
07:03never intended to hurt anyone or take anyone's money.
07:07Later, in client lawsuits, he would side against the celebrities who endorsed his company,
07:10Oprah Winfrey and the James Fry lie. If you were an unknown author, getting a recommendation from
07:15the Oprah Winfrey Show's book club segment could turn you into an overnight success.
07:19That book coming out and the controversies related to it were
07:24obviously a big moment for me, but probably not in the ways people might think.
07:28In September 2005, the talk show legend selected James Fry's A Million Little Pieces. It was said
07:34to be a memoir of the author's struggle with substances. However, allegations were then
07:38released claiming that the content was embellished and contained lies. In 2006,
07:43Winfrey confronted Fry on her show, leading to him admitting to lying.
07:46I did that show, and I was pretty defensive. I was defending my turf and defending, uh,
07:54every single viewer who had bought that book. I am standing here on behalf of the reader who's
08:02pissed off. Winfrey wasn't done, as she also publicly embarrassed the book's publisher,
08:06Nantalise. The scandal caused Fry's agent to drop him. Lawsuits soon followed,
08:11leading Random House to set up a refund policy in 2007 in order to settle the cases.
08:15I was surprised. The ferocity of the attack definitely surprised me and definitely hurt,
08:22and it seemed to last forever. You know, I was in papers for months.
08:29Fyre Festival Influencer Endorsements
08:31Scheduled to take place over weekends in April and May of 2017,
08:35Fyre Festival was set to be a luxury music festival on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas.
08:39The actual experience exceeds all expectations. It is something that's hard to put into words.
08:45Leading up to it, several celebrities, including Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid,
08:49and Kendall Jenner jumped aboard to promote this unmissable experience. However,
08:53some of the famous faces didn't disclose it was an advertisement when they published on
08:57social media. This drew further ire when the festival turned out to be fraudulent,
09:01when attendees got paled in comparison to what they were promised. As lawsuits soon rolled in,
09:05the event's organizer, Billy McFarland, was sentenced to six years in jail.
09:09I was wrong, so I messed up.
09:12Bella Hadid apologized for her role, while Hailey Bieber donated her fee to charity.
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09:32Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme
09:34As the head of a successful stock brokerage firm for decades,
09:37Bernie Madoff's reputation grew as he began working with high-profile foundations,
09:41including those created by writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel
09:45and film director Steven Spielberg.
09:47Tonight, as much as $50 billion is gone, vanished.
09:52From Madoff clients around the world, including celebrities like Steven Spielberg,
09:57Kevin Bacon, and Elie Wiesel.
09:59He also worked with other celebrities like Kevin Bacon, John Malkovich, and Sandy Koufax.
10:03Yet behind the scenes, Madoff was crafting the largest known Ponzi scheme in history.
10:08The majority of those who invested with Madoff lost millions.
10:23Malkovich alone lost $2.23 million.
10:26Altogether, the scheme was esteemed to be worth $65 billion.
10:30In 2008, Madoff's sons called the cops after he admitted to them about the scheme.
10:34He was sentenced to 150 years in prison.
10:36He served almost 12 before passing away in 2021.
10:53What other infamous incidents did we miss out from our list?
10:56Anne Hathaway's partner Raffaello Folieri committing fraud?
10:59Prince Harry being the victim of a practical joke by Russian radio hosts?
11:02Let us know in the comments!