Hollywood Starr Al Pacino, Uma Thurman,
Ron Howard, Barbara Walters—These were just a few of Ken Starr's clients-turned-victims
after he was caught running a Ponzi scheme in the late 2000s.
The scam allowed Kenneth Starr, not the same Ken Starr who investigated the Clintons,
to live a lifestyle akin to the celebrities he swindled. He owned
a $7 million mansion with his wife Diane, a former adult entertainer, who boasted a
$400,000 jewelry collection. She also blew thousands of dollars at hotels on the weekends.
In fact, that's how Starr met Diane. In 2004, Ken and his then-wife Marisa approached Diane and a
couple of other dancers. The Starrs asked the dancers to attend dinner with them. They offered
to pay each dancer $1,000 for their time, and Diane and the others gladly accepted the offer.
Starr's brought them to several high-end Manhattan restaurants.
Diane says that Ken asked the dancers to be his plus 3s at the Four Seasons after a few dinners.
Diana accepted again, realizing that Marisa suffered from health issues that kept her
from attending these wild weekends at expensive hotels. Starr paid Diane $1,000 to stay at the
Four Seasons and the Bouley hotel a few more times before asking her to spend the night with him.
She accepted, and the rest is a costly history. After their physical affair became a marriage,
Diane took control of Starr's credit cards. Diane took a different approach than Marisa,
who she claims let Starr spend the money however he wanted.
According to investigators, Diane was responsible for the huge spike in Starr's spending. Though
she claims Starr insisted on buying all the luxuries, like the apartment, the jewels,
and Diane's gaudy engagement ring. However, her claims make sense, given Starr's background.
Bronx Tale Like Al Pacino,
Starr grew up in the Bronx. Pacino went on to win an academy award and earn millions,
some of which Starr stole to spend on dancers and 5-star hotels.
Starr lived in a small house in the South Bronx long before he ever stole a dime from Pacino.
Starr showed his intelligence relatively quickly and started attending Queens College at 15.
After graduating, Starr married his high school sweetheart, had two children,
and got a job at an accounting firm. Young Starr was a straight-laced family man, but not for long.
Starr Is Born Everything changed
when Starr met Peter Stone, a wealthy Broadway songwriter. Stone hired Starr as his accountant
but treated the young number-cruncher like a friend. Stone liked Starr and regularly treated
him to fancy restaurants, where he introduced his accountant to other members of Broadway.
Starr was hooked. And so we're the stars he met. Starr possessed a natural charisma and
intelligence that attracted famous people like a moth to a light,
especially if the moth needed a good accountant.
One of Starr's former clients remembers how the accountant used to rope in his famous clients.
He told Vanity Fair that Starr warned them about how time-consuming managing
their millions could be. Since they were busy acting, directing, writing,
and producing, they shouldn't have to worry about such things.
Starr explained that he knew a few "special" funds they could invest in and earn substantial returns.
The Broadway workers were impressed and hired Starr more often than not.
While fooling a financially illiterate Broadway star sounds easy,
they weren't the only 5th Avenue types Starr convinced.
Intelligence, charisma, and pathological lying are never a good combination.
Starr's blend translated well to the inheritors of large business fortunes.
Take Louisa Sarofim, the then-heiress to the multi-billion Brown & Root fortune.
Sarofim was from Houston but frequented New York. Starr convinced the heiress,
who was constantly surrounded by advisors, to give him a sliver of her fortune.
One former victim says Starr used flattery to seduce wealthy women like Sarofim. Her name is
Joan Stanton, a Broadway playwright, and novelist. She'd inherited a fortune from her late husband,
Arthur Stanton, the businessman who introduced the Volkswagen Beetle to the U.S back in the 60s.
He convinced Joan to set up a $5 million trust fund for her children. He assured her that the
money was safe inside of an investment fund called Blackstone Investment Partnership.
At the time, Joan's children weren't children. They were grown adults in their 30s and 40s.
However, Starr told Joan that the children were spoiled and didn't need a fortune yet.
She believed him, mainly since he already oversaw the children's inheritance. She allowed Starr
to move their money into Blackstone. A man named Pete Peterson owned Blackstone,
and he loved Starr almost as much as the accountant's clients did.
Peterson knew Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer, who all swore that Starr was
the coolest thing since sliced bread. On top of that, Starr had injected over $100
million into Blackstone. Even Peterson, a seasoned financial expert, was fooled.
Hollywood Money Guy Eventually,
Starr integrated himself into mega-wealthy and super famous circles. He wasn't just their
accountant. He was their friend. One witness says they saw Starr at a wedding reception
and wondered why he was there. They were even more flabbergasted when Starr, an accountant,
was asked by multi-millionaires to jump into their group photos. The bride was Courtney Ross,
the heir to an $800 million fortune from late husband and former Time Warner CEO Steve Ross.
Starr had already accumulated his most famous clients, especially ones with ties to New York by
that point. He'd convinced Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese to hand him a six-figure sum.
He became best friends with Al Pacino, who trusted him like a brother. And,
he'd convinced Sylvester Stallone to invest $10 million—a massive sum, even by Starr's standards.
Things went south for Starr when Stallone's investment ultimately failed, leading to
the actor nearly exposing the charismatic accountant after his money suddenly disappeared.
Rocky vs Starr Sylvester Stallone sued Starr
in 2002. In case you didn't know, Stallone is famous for his roles as boxing champion
Rocky Balboa and commando-killing-machine Rambo, among other 80s action movie roles.
Stallone was suing Starr for fraud, alleging that the accountant tricked him into keeping his money
in a bad investment: a restaurant called Planet Hollywood. Stallone asked Starr to sell his shares
after learning that the owner of Planet Hollywood, Keith Barish, was selling his shares. But,
instead of selling, Starr calmed Stallone down and convinced the action star not to sell.
Planet Hollywood crashed and burned, and Stallone took a big loss.
He blamed Starr for the failed investment. Starr,
responsible for the loss, had no choice but to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount.
On top of the settlement, Starr also lost one of his wealthiest clients: heiress Courtney Ross.
The Planet Hollywood fiasco inevitably revealed the dark side of Starr
but also showed people like the skeptical witness just how loyal most of his clients
still were. Starr's most loyal client, and arguably the most famous, was Al Pacino.
Accountant vs Girlfriend Pacino is considered by many to be the
greatest actor of all time. He gets so invested in his roles he sometimes stays in character
off-screen. His dedication has earned him iconic roles like that of Michael Corleone in The
Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, and Jimmy Hoffa in Scorsese's The Irishman.
As mentioned earlier, both Pacino and Starr grew up poor in the Bronx. Pacino
didn't know many people who grew up like him, so he connected with Starr
on a much deeper level than just a regular friendship would allow.
Pacino's girlfriend at the time, Beverly D'Angelo, had a different take on Starr:
she didn't trust him. D'Angelo started officially dating Pacino in 1997.
The couple grew so close they decided to have children together. In 2001, D'Angelo gave birth
to twins. Pacino agreed to send D'Angelo money to help pay for their newborn baby's expenses.
He, of course, asked his accountant Ken Starr to help gather and send the money to D'Angelo.
The money came in several weeks late, with a certain amount missing from the promised sum.
D'Angelo confronted Starr about the missing money. He responded by accusing her
of spending too much money and thus not fit to handle the amount she'd asked for. D'Angelo,
furious, told Starr he didn't know what he was talking about.
She then spoke to Pacino, telling the actor that Starr may be mishandling his money. Pacino
was offended. He told D'Angelo that his friend would never do anything like that. The conflict
only grew from there. And two years later, in 2003, the famous couple called it quits.
Pacino stuck with Starr throughout the break up and until his arrest,
which the actor only commented on through statements carefully written by his publicist.
He even stayed silent during the Uma Thurman scandal.
Uma Thurman Uma Thurman got
her breakout role in 1994 when she starred in Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece Pulp Fiction.
Since then, she's acted in other big films like Kill Bill, also directed by Tarantino,
and Batman and Robin, where she played comic book villain Poison Ivy.
One day, Thurman noticed $1 million was missing from her account,
an account managed by Starr. She'd known him since she was 17. Thurman stormed into Starr's
office with two lawyers in a betrayal-fueled rage, demanding to know where her money was.
Starr's office gave Thurman a few lame excuses. But, not long after the meeting,
Starr reimbursed Thurman by moving $1 million back into her account. Everything seemed fine
now. Except, it wasn't. The $1 million Starr gave Thurman came from the Wiatt family account.
Thurman's reimbursement is textbook Ponzi scheming. Starr took money from
one client, spent the money on a multi-million dollar apartment,
then repaid the angry client with another client's money. The only problem? Thurman
is world-famous, and word gets around pretty quickly when someone's that famous.
The missing money scandal led many of Starr's clients to doubt his integrity. But there were
other signs. Some were very obvious, while others were just plain bizarre.
Downfall Towards the end,
Starr let himself go. He acted weird, invested in strange companies, and obsessively talked about
his wife's pole dancing. The odd investments fell like a stack of poorly constructed cards.
First, a few started to slip out of place, like Uma Thurman's $1 million. Then the whole house
fell. Diane Sawyer and Neil Simon pulled their money out, citing mismanagement. Joan Stanton,
while on her deathbed, sued Starr for stealing her and her children's money.
Amazingly enough, Joan only sued Starr because her longtime caretaker, Jim Fennel,
convinced her to do so. She was initially scared to confront Starr, fearing he might talk her
into giving him more money. But Fennel told Joan that she had to stand up to the scammer.
The next time Joan met Starr, her daughter Jane was there
at Fennel's request. He wanted Jane to see Starr in action. Most importantly,
he wanted Jane to make sure her mother didn't fall for Starr's tricks.
Sure enough, when Starr met with Joan and Jane, he immediately tried convincing them to invest in a
"lucrative" new opportunity that would make $1 million, guaranteed.
By the end of Starr's pitch, Joan was convinced. She was
even planning on giving Starr more money before Jane burst her bubble.
Jane asked her mother when the last time she'd checked on her investment account was.
Joan decided to look at her account. She discovered that, cash-wise,
she was broke. The $5 million trust was gone, taken down on Planet Hollywood's sinking ship.
The Stanton family acted quickly against Starr and filed a lawsuit against him.
The suit alleged that Starr transferred millions out of the Stanton family trust fund to cover
his losses and pay back investors. The civil suit turned into a criminal case,
leading investigators to examine all the other strange transactions at Starr Co.
They found that several clients were missing money from their accounts. Starr told them
he was moving the funds into a better asset. Whenever the clients asked for their money,
Starr ignored them. Many of these clients never saw their money again.
The Stanton family got lucky. They forced Starr to award them a $3 million settlement,
which wasn't all the money they lost, but half is better than nothing.
The not-so-lucky victims lost their money in doomed startups like Planet Hollywood and Starr's
personal pet project, Pole Superstars. Diane came up with the idea for Pole Superstars. As a
former dancer, she wanted to make the 'art form' a sport to have pole dancing made an Olympic event.
Starr was 110% behind the idea. He bragged to everyone about his wife's brilliant idea.
He also bragged about how Diane was a pole dancer. Many of his friends and clients say
that Starr was obsessed with Diane's past dancing as if she was a sexy status symbol.
However, much to Starr's surprise, Pole Superstar
never got the funding it needed. Soon enough, the startup fell apart.
So did Starr's other businesses, high-risk investments, and the longtime Ponzi Scheme.
The financial crash of 2008 caused many people, even the ultra-wealthy, to clamor for their money.
That's when people discovered their money was missing or somewhere it wasn't supposed to be.
Law enforcement caught on and arrested Starr in May of 2010 after a detailed investigation.
Aftermath After his arrest,
Starr was indicted on several counts of fraud, including the theft of over $50
million. In the spring of 2011, Starr was found guilty and sentenced to 7 years in
prison. The judge also ordered Starr to pay $29 million in restitution. Starr spent a few
years behind bars before moving to a halfway house. His term officially ended in 2016.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
And let us know in the comment section what you’d rather do with 5 million dollars you
had to invest, invest it by yourself or let someone else manage it for you?