Vince Vaughn's Mom Was Conned Out Of A Whopping $25 Million: Here's Whether Or Not Her Net Worth Eve
At the height of Vince Vaughn's career, he was busy starring in successful movies. Since fans like to learn behind-the-scenes facts about Wedding Crashers, Vaughn was a big enough star that there was interest in his life and family.
Most notably, since the media is fascinated by Jennifer Aniston's love life and even her fertility status, Vaughn's past relationship with her garnered a lot of attention. When Vaughn's fans learned about what happened to his mother, however, they likely will be even more fascinated by her.
How Vince Vaughn's Mom Was Scammed Out Of Millions
When Vince Vaughn became a major movie star, he gained enough Hollywood clout to demand massive salaries for his work. According to Celebrity Net Worth, that success has allowed Vaughn to have a $70 million fortune as of this writing.
Considering that Vaughn's career seemingly came just from nowhere, many fans know next to nothing about his background. As it turns out, just like Emma Watson has parents with a lot of money, Vaughn's mom accumulated a lot of wealth.
Tragically for Vaughn's mom, who now goes by Shea Vaughn, it looked like she had lost everything in 2006. According to lawsuits that the government filed, Shea Vaughn was the victim of a scam that destroyed her company.
Up until the year 2006, Shea Vaughn managed a hedge fund known as the Directors Performance Group. Things with Shea Vaughn's hedge fund seemed to be going great until March 2005 when she was approached by someone named David Myatt.
Myatt claimed to be a representative of American Trade Industries. As the New York Times article described, Myatt claimed the company was "a 'Fed'-supervised group that dealt in unidentified fixed-income assets, buying the instruments at discount and reselling them at profit".
Furthermore, Myatt allegedly claimed that American Trade Industries investors "could earn up to a 10 percent return each month". After buying into Myatt's claims, Shea Vaughn invested 20 million of the money her clients trusted to her in American Trade Industries in April 2005.
That same month, Shea Vaughn was convinced to transfer that sum and an additional $5 million to an Italian account. At first glance, observers may think that Shea Vaughn was being reckless because she was using other people's money.
To get the full picture of what happened with Shea Vaughn's hedge fund, it is important to note that she clearly believed she was making a good investment. After all, $2 million of Shea Vaughn's own money was part of the $25 million she sent.
Things then fell apart for Shea Vaughn when four of her investors decided to pull out their money. Since that left Shea Vaughn's hedge fund without any money, the S.E.C. stepped in to investigate the situation and discovered the scam.
Shea Vaughn cooperated with the investigation and even wore a wire to help the government's investigation. That resulted in the government suing Myatt and his associate William H. Eichengreen over their scheme.
Shea Vaughn also got in trouble with the government after everything was uncovered. After its investigation, the S.E.C. discovered what the New York Times described as "falsified or incomplete documents that hid the transactions with American Trade Industries".
Fortunately for Shea Vaughn, the legal troubles she found herself in didn't result in her spending any time behind bars. That said, even though Shea Vaughn co-operated with the government, she didn't walk away scot-free.
According to Forbes, Shea Vaughn had extensive experience in real estate, insurance, and investments before her company fell apart. On top of that, at one point Bloomberg listed Directors Performance Group at 105th on their list of high-end personal money managers.
After The S.E.C. discovered what happened with the Directors Performance Group, all of that changed. The reason for that is Shea Vaughn made an agreement with the government to put an end to her legal troubles.
As a part of the deal Shea Vaughn made with The S.E.C., she didn't admit or deny any claims about her handling of the Directors Performance Group. That said, Shea Vaughn did agree to be banned from the securities industry for life.
Did Shea Vaughn Get The Money She Was Scammed Out Of Back?
By the time The New York Times published its aforementioned article about Shea Vaughn's company getting scammed, a lot had already happened. Most notably, three of the people involved in the scam were arrested.
Most notably for Shea Vaughn and the people whose money she once lost, the government was able to retrieve $21.6 million of the $25 million she lost. At that time, The S.E.C. announced that they'd instructed the Directors Performance Group to return $20 million of that money to its investors.
As for the remaining $1.6 million, there is no way to know if Shea Vaughn or other investors received part of all of that money. That said, even in the extremely unlikely scenario that Shea Vaughn took home all $1.6 million, she would have lost more than half of that money.
When Shea Vaughn made her deal with the government, she agreed to pay an $809,000 fine. That means that at the absolute most, Shea Vaughn got $791,000 of her $2 million back and that seems unlikely.
Fortunately for Shea Vaughn, she has gone on to have an interesting second act in her career. After leaving the securities behind, Shea Vaughn went on to found several companies including one based around the fitness program she came up with called SheaNetics.
Shea Vaughn also went on to form a media company called WomenOnTV which she described on LinkedIn this way. "My commitment and dedication led me to found WomenOnTV, the first global OTT digital TV network for women. My digital broadcasting footprint now also includes WorldWideTV and is the new parent to Women On TV."
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