Big stars earn big bucks and that’s exactly why the need good financial advisors to help them manage their wealth. Unfortunately, that also can make them become victims of people who want to take advantage of their money. Here are the celebrities who trusted the wrong people with their finances and got scammed.

Liv Tyler

 

 

 

 

 

Mari Gabriela Hashemipour is a skin expert, who used to work with several famous people and Liv was one of them. Hashemipour was retaining her client’s credit card numbers and was charging up the cards with her own spending. Liv Tyler was hit hard. Her managers eventually noticed $214,000 dollar in charges on the actress’s credit card accounts that were not Tyler’s purchases. It turned out that used Liv’s money for shopping.

Uma Thurman

 

 

 

 

 

Thurman was taken for $1 million by financial advisor Kenneth Starr. Starr had been hired to handle various aspects of her finances, and, it was later discovered, took around $33 million from his clients to give his wife a glamorous lifestyle. Eventually, Thurman noticed the money was missing and confronted him. He immediately paid her back, but with another client’s money. Starr was sentenced to 90 months in prison.

Billy Joel

 

 

 

 

 

Billy Joel filed a lawsuit for $90 million against his ex-manager (and ex-brother-in-law) Frank Weber in 1989 after claiming he’d committed fraud and stole millions of Joel’s dollars. Weber reportedly used Joel’s money for his own investments. After a series of judgments, appeals and countersuits, Joel walked away with around $8 million.

Robert De Niro

 

 

 

 

 

Robert De Niro had 50 paintings that were all done by his father. He decided to consign the paintings to a well-known art gallery owner, Lawrence Salander. Salander sold all the paintings, but kept the profits to pay off his debts. He stole all the money in sales owed to Robert De Niro, and scammed all his art clients out of a total of $88 million dollars.

Ben Stiller

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Stiller was also taken advantage of by a financial advisor to the stars, Dana Giacchetto. He reportedly took in the ballpark of $10 million from clients’ accounts, including an estimated $250,000 from Stiller. Despite suffering losses, Stiller was said to be one of the lucky celebrities, according to The New York Observer. Like Uma Thurman, his money was repaid. Giacchetto served three years in prison.

Elton John

 

 

 

 

 

Elton John sued business manager, Andrew Hadyon and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, for mismanagement of tour payouts. The total estimate for the lawsuit was $29 million dollars. The court could not find the evidence conclusive and disagreed with John’s findings. Elton John had to pay $10 million dollars in legal fees and the trial leaked all kinds of information about John’s personal spending habits, including the fact that he’d spent more than $60 million in less than two years.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the most widely publicized victims of rogue financier Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme were actors Kyra Sedgwick and her husband, Kevin Bacon, who had managed to stay out of the tabloids for many years. “I think the interesting thing about it was that I always thought, ‘We’re so boring. We should be in the tabloids more. C’mon honey, let’s have a scandal,'” the actress told the Associated Press. Madoff defrauded his clients of nearly $65 billion in what became the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Kevin and Kyra were among the hardest-hit victims of the scheme, losing nearly all of their money. In a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan, Bacon shared that “it was recommended that [he] put some money with it and [he] did. It was most of our money.”

Kiefer Sutherland

 

 

 

 

 

Kiefer Sutherland invested in cattle and got scammed. Michael Wayne Carr made a business deal with his customers to buy steers in Mexico and sell them in the United States for more money. Carr convinced Sutherland to invest $869,000 dollars. Prosecutors said there’s no record Carr ever bought the steers. They also said Carr sold steers that didn’t belong to him. Carr was charged with 12 felonies, including grand theft, forgery and embezzlement.

Sting

 

 

 

 

 

In 1995, Keith Moore, Sting’s financial adviser for 15 years, was accused of using a complex financial system involving more than 100 accounts  to take more than 6 million British pounds (U.S. $9.8 million) from Sting without the rock star’s knowledge. Then, according to the lawsuit, he lost the money in a series of bad investments and for his own personal use.