News

Mel B Says Her Ex-Manager Is An Evil Con Artist

• 22nd Sep 2010

The former Spice Girls singer and her husband Stephen Belafonte are involved in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her former talent manager Dan Catullo and claim he misappropriated large sums of their money.
Mel said: “He’s a con man, a con artist. He’s a very evil con artist with not very good intentions. He steals people’s money, not just our money but a bunch of other people’s money.”

Stephen revealed Dan – who the couple hired to set up a company to profit from the singer's “music, touring, merchandising and public appearances” – used Mel’s name to buy a $140,000 Audi sports car.

He said: “He actually used Mel’s name in one of the cons he did by saying he was getting a car for Mel.”

Mel added: “A $140,000 car, he bought it and said it was for me. He said that I had ordered him to buy it because he was actually doing business with us and his business partner believed it. But this is a guy who we entrusted to run our company. He has never shown any accounting, he has misappropriated tons of money.”

The couple claim Dan – who is countersuing the pair, claiming they repeatedly failed to keep appointments and personal appearance opportunities he arranged – also offered to help Mel throw a birthday party for Stephen, defrauding her out of up to $40,000.

Stephen said: “My wife threw a surprise birthday party for me and this guy Dan said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just give me $30,000 or $40,000.’ It was an elaborate party – there were fire breathers and elephants. And about a month after the party people started coming to us and saying, ‘Hey you owe us for that party,’ and we said, ‘What are you talking about? Dan paid for all of that didn’t he?’ And he hadn’t.”

Mel made the decision to speak out in order to prevent other people being fooled by Dan – who she compares to a “vampire”.

She told RadarOnline.com in an exclusive interview: “What I think is really disturbing is that this guy is right now walking around Los Angeles. He’d be the nicest guy on face value but underneath that he’s a vampire. He takes your money, he sells you a completely different story. He morphs into all these different names and characters and he just ruins people’s lives.
Luckily, we have a fully functioning business, luckily, we can pick ourselves up.”

Mel, Stephen and their business partners, including Dan, are the subject of a lawsuit filed at Los Angeles Superior Court earlier this month by BMEDIA accusing them of fraud and breach of contract.