These once-popular reality stars managed to ruin their fame by spreading vicious rumors,
getting locked up, and threatening to harm their co-stars, among other offenses.
Here’s how your former favorite TV personalities ruined their careers.
"Hey girlfriends!
Why don't we all have some drinks and talk about how I think Portia has no class.
Yeah, you heard me Portia!"
Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino made his ascent into B-list celebrity status after appearing
on the MTV reality series Jersey Shore.
His bizarrely charming personality and rock hard abs proved to be bankable assets, so
the cash started pouring in.
"As far as I know, everybody loves The Situation.
And if you don’t love The Situation, I’m gonna make you love The Situation."
Apparently, neither Sorrentino’s abs nor charm worked on the federal government.
According to TMZ, the reality star’s life did a 180 when he was nabbed by the IRS for
failing to pay taxes on nearly nine million dollars in earnings.
Forbes reported that Sorrentino entered a guilty plea on one count of tax evasion in
January 2018 while his brother, Marc, pleaded guilty to one count of aiding in the preparation
of a fraudulent tax return.
The disgraced reality star began his 8-month prison sentence at Otisville Federal Correctional
Institution in Otisville, New York in January 2019.
But before he left, The Situation had one final farewell shindig: his November 2018
wedding to longtime girlfriend, Lauren Pesce, followed by a honeymoon in the Santa Catalina
mountains.
It's bittersweet the newlyweds will spend their first few months as husband and wife
away from each other.
Luckily, once Sorrentino's sentence is over, he can reunite with her and his Jersey Shore
Family Vacation cast mates, since MTV gave the reality show reboot the green-light for
Season 3.
Prison first, but GTL forever!
In an iconic video clip from Teen Mom OG, executive producer Morgan J. Freeman tells
Farrah Abraham that if she continues to work in the adult film industry, Teen Mom will
not continue to have her on the show.
Abraham, who's never been one to back down, immediately claps back:
"Who are you to tell someone to choose one thing?
F---ing shoot me for being who I am."
Who is he?
Well, he was your employer, Farrah.
Abraham refused to agree to the stipulations, and with MTV's cameras no longer documenting
the mother of one, her life flipped upside down.
According to TMZ, Abraham signed 5-year leases in 2016 for two boutiques she operated at
a mall in Lakeway, Texas.
After shutting their doors, Abraham allegedly stopped paying rent on both storefronts and
was sued for owing over one hundred thousand dollars in past due rent.
RadarOnline stated Abraham was also sued by her lawyer in November 2018 for an outstanding
bill, and an additional twelve thousand dollar lawsuit was filed by a promoter after she
backed out of a boxing match.
After being hit with multiple lawsuits, Abraham reportedly had to move in with her father
and his fiancée.
People magazine confirmed that Brandi Glanville had been given the ax after season 5 of The
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills due to a series of tumultuous verbal altercations with
her castmates.
A source told People:
Another source told Us Weekly that the show's executive producer, Andy Cohen, was also a
bit peeved with her, stating:
Perhaps Glanville should've put in more effort to play nice, because without the show, she’s
suffered from some pretty intense hardships.
While speaking to TMZ after her firing, Glanville revealed her financial situation had been
strained since she left the program.
Being sweet and cordial is probably a better move in terms of job security, but without
Glanville, the show is definitely missing the dramatic, combative villainess.
Teresa Giudice seemed to have it all when she made her debut on The Real Housewives
of New Jersey.
She had oodles of cash at her disposal and a mega-mansion that she shared with her four
daughters and her husband, Joe.
Giudice was living quite a charmed life… up until the IRS caught wind of her and her
husband's shady dealings, which included bankruptcy fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit
wire fraud, to name a few.
Giudice and her husband pleaded guilty to the charges, with Teresa looking at up to
27 months in prison.
"I got stuck with being involved."
Her husband began serving a 41-month prison term in March 2016, and faced possible deportation
back to his native Italy after he admitted to failing to pay nearly one million dollars
in taxes.
The Real Housewife was ultimately sentenced to 15 months behind bars herself, beginning
her prison stint on January 5th, 2015.
She was also ordered to pay four hundred thousand dollars in restitution and thirteen-million
dollars for her bankruptcy.
Her prison days may be behind her now, but Giudice’s dodgy financial mistakes could
leave a stain on her reality TV career forever.
When you think of MTV's The Hills, you probably instantly think of Heidi Montag and her boyfriend-turned-husband,
Spencer Pratt, the couple better known to fans as Speidi.
On the series, Spencer was the bad boy, and Heidi was the one who so desperately wanted
their relationship to work out.
Despite her BFF Lauren Conrad calling Spencer a "sucky person," Montag stood by his side,
causing major discord in their friendship.
Unlike a few of the other celebs on our list, Montag's descent from fame had to do with
her own desire to be famous.
Even the reality star's husband revealed:
According to The Daily Beast, the plastic surgery-obsessed Montag and Pratt blew through
all of their money after their MTV days were over and the paid nightclub appearances dried
up.
They even had to resort to shacking up in Pratt's parents' beach house.
Her failing superstardom, which was once her bread and butter, left her broke, created
rifts with her family members, and made other reality shows hesitate to book her for gigs.
"But you have to realize what I’ve been through, and you have to realize that I've
been through so much pain."
We’re interested to see how things will fare for Montag on MTV’s The Hills: New
Beginnings.
The drama here started on season 9 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta when cast member
Porsha Williams gossiped behind castmate Kandi Burruss' back, insinuating that Burruss was
an undercover lesbian.
Once news got back to Burruss, she revealed that she and Williams had actually shared
a kiss after a boozy night at an after-hours club, and also alleged that Williams had offered
to perform a sex act on her that same night.
This caused Williams to go on the defensive and unleash a fury of accusations, including
a rumor that Burruss had a kinky "sex dungeon" in her home.
"She said I had a sex dungeon!
You know if I had one, I would tell everybody about it because I don't care!"
During a cast trip to Hawaii, Williams said she heard a rumor from an unnamed person that
Burruss and her husband, Todd Tucker, had plans to drug Williams and their mutual friend
Shamea Morton in order to have sex with them.
During the reunion episode, cast mate Phaedra Parks confirmed she was the one who "repeated"
the rumor after receiving the information from another unnamed source.
Bravo TV executive producer Andy Cohen revealed to E! News that after the season wrapped,
none of the cast mates agreed to film with Parks for season 10, putting an end to her
time on the show.
Derick Dillard, who starred alongside his wife Jill Duggar on TLC's Counting On, took
to his Twitter to discuss Jazz Jennings, the transgender star of TLC's I Am Jazz, in an
insensitive and hurtful tweet.
Dillard’s tweet read:
Jennings' fans clapped back in her defense, which prompted Dillard to dig his hole a little
bit deeper, tweeting:
Online users were disgusted that he purposely used the wrong pronoun to refer to Jennings,
but before the verbal fisticuffs could escalate, TLC released a statement via Twitter in which
they told viewers Dillard would no longer be featured in the series, writing:
Dillard seemed to take the firing in stride, but less than a month later, he decided he
needed to clear things up in a tweet that read:
Uhhh, whatever you say, dude.
In 2000, Richard Hatch outsmarted his competition to become the first winner of the American
version of Survivor, winning one million dollars.
Unfortunately, he neglected to pay taxes on his earnings, something which he admitted
to Forbes.
Hatch stated he asked for an extension to file the IRS paperwork through his accountant,
and although he claimed to be in communication with the federal government, they slapped
him with an indictment for willful evasion two years later.
Instead of taking a plea deal like he was advised to do, Hatch decided to go to trial
where he was eventually found guilty on all ten criminal counts.
The Survivor champion was looking at 47 years in prison, so we're sure he breathed a sigh
of relief when he was sentenced to only three years.
Upon his 2009 release, he headed back to reality TV to appear in various shows, including Celebrity
Apprentice.
But Uncle Sam came knocking once again after Hatch failed to refile his 2000 and 2001 taxes
and neglected to pay an outstanding tax bill of two million dollars.
He was sentenced to an additional nine month jail term in March 2011 and was given 26 months
of supervised release, which means he missed out on watching the finale of Celebrity Apprentice
in the comforts of his own home.
"That's just life."
Fans of Bravo's Southern Charm were floored when Thomas Ravenel's September 2018 arrest
for second degree assault and battery was reported by People magazine.
The alleged victim, known as Nanny Dawn, had also been featured on the series.
Police began investigating the charges in May 2018, after Dawn claimed Ravenel "corralled"
her into his bedroom, "dropped his pants, blocked the door," and allegedly "ripped [her]
clothes off.”
Following Ravenel's arrest, Bravo confirmed that he had been axed from the show.
An insider added in a follow-up article by People that his Southern Charm co-stars were,
A second woman claimed in a blog post that Ravenel also sexually assaulted her mother,
Debbie Holloway Perkins, in 2015 after they matched on Tinder.
The former reality star denied both allegations in a statement through his lawyer, though
he allegedly paid Debbie a two hundred thousand dollar settlement in June 2016, according
to Us Weekly.
Things only got worse from there.
While entangled in a bitter custody battle with his ex-girlfriend and fellow Southern
Charm cast member, Kathryn Dennis,The Blast reported that Ravenel sued Bravo and the show's
producers in November 2018 to prevent them from "airing unaired footage," leaving many
fans to wonder what else the disgraced reality star was trying to hide.
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