Many people turn their attention to their favorite stars for inspiration, sometimes hope and, why not, a role model. However, celebrities are people just like you and me, which means that they can be vulnerable and make mistakes too. Probably this is why they often seem to fall victim to scams.
Let’s see how these 6 celebrities got scammed.
1. Billy Joel
Pop music superstar Billy Joel sued his former manager Frank Weber in 1989, who was also his former brother-in-law, and godfather to his daughter. Joel accused Weber of using a series of shady investments to steal from him $90 million. Unfortunately, Weber filed for bankruptcy, so Billy walked away with only $8 million.
2. Elton John
Everybody knows that British superstar Elton John is a big spender, but when he found out that due to poor management of his finances he lost $30 million, he immediately filed a lawsuit against his former accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and his former manager. Sadly for Elton, due to lack of evidence he didn’t get his money back, on the contrary, he had to pay $10 million in legal fees.
3. Sting
Rock superstar Sting was scammed by his show business accountant Keith Moore, thus the former losing nearly $5 million. Moore was Sting’s financial adviser for 15 years and it seems like in all these years he used the star’s money to make sketchy investments. This is why in 1995 Moore was jailed for six years.
4. John Malkovich
Actor John Malkovich lost $2.2 million because of a Ponzi scheme that also scammed many other celebrities. The culprit was Bernie Madoff and although he got sentenced to a 150-year prison sentence, he died at the Federal Medical Center, Butner, in North Carolina, after suffering from chronic kidney disease on April 14, 2021.
5. Alanis Morissette
The Canadian singer Alanis Morissette lost nearly $5 million because of her former business manager Jonathan Todd Schwartz, he was sentenced to six years in prison for embezzling Alanis and other celebrity clients.
6. Kiefer Sutherland
British-born Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland was scammed by swindler Michael Wayne Carr in 2010, when the latter proposed to the `24` star to invest in his alleged cattle business. This is how Sutherland ended up losing $869,000. Moreover, it seems like Carr deceived other investors as well.
So, as we can see, no one is truly safe from scams, not even A-list celebrities.
