Home » Latest » Celebrity » Actors Who Were Scammed Out Of Millions

Actors Who Were Scammed Out Of Millions

6

InfoSearched 45 0 Celebrity

8.6

SaveSavedRemoved 2

Hollywood’s biggest paychecks turned out to be no match for a convincing enough liar.

Being a movie star means having people around you who handle the money — the business managers, the financial advisors, the guys who “just take care of it.” That arrangement works fine until the person holding the checkbook decides to help himself. Over the past three decades, some of the biggest names in the industry have handed over complete control of their fortunes to men who turned out to be running Ponzi schemes, cooking the books, or simply stealing outright.

• Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme ensnared Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and John Malkovich, and drained the bogus “returns” that Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation had relied on before Madoff’s 2008 arrest and 150-year sentence.
• Dana Giacchetto, the 1990s “stockbroker to the stars” who ran the Cassandra Group for clients including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, and Ben Stiller, was arrested in 2000 for stealing roughly $10 million from client accounts and got 57 months in prison.
• Kenneth Ira Starr, nicknamed the “mini Madoff,” ran a $59 million Ponzi scheme against clients like Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Wesley Snipes, and Uma Thurman to bankroll a $7.5 million Manhattan penthouse, landing him seven and a half years in federal prison in 2010.

The Madoff Fallout Reaches Hollywood

Bernie Madoff’s fraud was so massive — $65 billion, the largest Ponzi scheme in history — that it inevitably swept up plenty of famous names along with the pension funds and charities. Kevin Bacon and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, were among the actors who lost millions when the scheme collapsed in 2008. Academy Award nominee John Malkovich was hit too. Even Steven Spielberg wasn’t immune: his Wunderkinder Foundation had leaned on the suspiciously steady, suspiciously high returns Madoff had been reporting for years before the whole operation unraveled and Madoff was arrested and eventually sentenced to 150 years.

Cassandra Group’s Collapse

Before Madoff became a household name for fraud, there was Dana Giacchetto. In the 1990s, Giacchetto built the Cassandra Group into the go-to financial firm for young Hollywood, managing money for Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, and Ben Stiller. It looked like a golden run — until 2000, when Giacchetto was arrested for stealing approximately $10 million out of client accounts. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison, a stunning fall for a man who’d once been trusted with the earnings of some of the biggest names in the industry.

The ‘Mini Madoff’ and His Penthouse

Kenneth Ira Starr didn’t run a scheme on Madoff’s scale, but the playbook was identical: promise safe, steady returns, then quietly siphon the money for yourself. Starr’s client list read like an awards-season guest list — Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Wesley Snipes — and his $59 million Ponzi scheme funded a lifestyle that included a $7.5 million Manhattan penthouse. It caught up with him in 2010, when he was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison.

A $59 million Ponzi scheme bought Kenneth Starr a $7.5 million Manhattan penthouse — and cost Uma Thurman $1 million she had to demand back in person.

Betrayal Closer To Home

Not every scam came from a stranger with a business card. Comedian Dane Cook was defrauded out of millions by his own half-brother, Darryl McCauley, who had been serving as his business manager — a betrayal that cut deeper than any stranger’s con could. Uma Thurman’s case with Kenneth Starr went the other direction: after losing $1 million to his scheme, she confronted him directly rather than waiting on the courts, and got her money back. Both stories point to the same vulnerability: performers who are brilliant at their craft but hand over total, unquestioned control of their finances to someone charismatic enough to ask for it.

Starr’s case, along with Giacchetto’s and Madoff’s, is part of a pattern covered in The Biggest Celebrity Prison Sentences That Were Cut Short, and the way trust curdles into betrayal among people who start out close shows up again in Celebs Who Started Out Friends And Ended Up Enemies. What connects Bacon, DiCaprio, Stallone, and Thurman isn’t bad luck — it’s that all of them, at some point, decided not to ask too many questions about where the returns were coming from.