Mr. Depp has appeared in some of the highest-grossing (”Pirates of the Caribbean") and weirdest (”Yoga Hosers") films of the past 30 years, earning him an estimated $650 million. Being a rich movie star, however, does not necessarily bring great financial savvy. Over the past decade, Mr. Depp has paid more than $5.6 million in interest on overdue taxes, has lent millions of dollars to people unlikely to pay him back and has unwisely splurchased on a number of questionable investments, not the least of which is that town near St.-Tropez.
These money missteps, Mr. Depp says, are not his fault. Back in 1999, you see, Mr. Depp hired a firm named the Management Group to oversee his finances. But instead of protecting his fortunes, those financial advisers ”engaged in years of gross mismanagement, self-dealing, and at times, actual fraud," according to a lawsuit Mr. Depp filed against the company. (The Management Group filed a countersuit on Tuesday denying wrongdoing and arguing that it ”did everything possible to protect Depp from his own irresponsible and profligate spending.")
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Mr. Depp, by his own admission, often had no idea what was occurring in his bank accounts and would regularly sign whatever documents the Management Group put before him, without bothering to read what they said, on the assumption that his financial adviser ”was behaving as a loyal fiduciary and prudent steward of his funds and finances," his lawsuit asserts.
What's more, according to the countersuit filed by the Management Group, Mr. Depp's financial distress was a result of his tendency to overspend — at a rate of $2 million a month — on items like 14 homes, a chain of islands in the Bahamas, $30,000 per month on wine, and $3 million to blast the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson from a custom-made cannon.
”I need to give my kiddies and famille as good a Christmas as possible," Mr. Depp wrote to his financial advisers when they counseled him to ”take it easy on holiday spending," according to the firm's countersuit. ”On those few occasions when Depp said he was ready to change his ways, he never did," the countersuit continues, ”and he always went back to his uncontrolled spending."
