It hasn't been a month since Anne Hathaway's ex-bf Raffaello Follieri was sent to prison and developed some sort of allergy to jail. But Hathaway is on the dating scene again, this time with a young actor Adam Shulman, who is already being described as "an opportunist just like Follieri." Says the Page Six tip:
"When he was at Brown [University], he went after all the heiresses. It's like Anne is addicted to losers."
But we have our own leak who went to college with Shulman describes him differently, "He's a huge dork…the kind of guy that looked up to other nerdy guys as his hero. He's basically harmless."
Hey, after such a whirlwind, jet-setting life that Follieri introduced her to, maybe the actress just wants to rebound with a nerdy Brown graduate. Nothing wrong with that.
Mark Cuban is the semi-professional loudmouth who's managed to make a killing on the Internet and parlay it into reality television fame. He's also the guy that, as of today, is being charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission of insider trading after he dumped his stocks of Mamma.com (a Google-esque search engine) after he found out the company was going to raise money by a certain type of private offering that typically depresses a stock.
Who said the white collar crimes were limited to nose-to-the-grindstone businessmen? Cuban, the owner of Dallas Mavericks and the HDNet channel, is a hard partying playboy with a severe case of butt-chin, and will probably find prison a delightful change of pace from swinging the tennis racket around with Ron Burkle to swinging the prison-regulated tennis around with Raffaello Follieri.
Raffaello Follieri, the con-man who duped Ron Burkle and other investors with claims of ties to the Vatican (but will always be referred to as Anne Hathaway's ex) does not find prison to be the Trump Towers he is normally accustomed to.
A letter from his lawyer reveals that Follieri has blood in his urine and finds poop on the wall of the shower! And the place "smells really bad." Ew, so disgusting! So vile! So utterly Les Miserables!
Despite her reluctance to open up to any publication regarding her ex Raffaello Follieri, Anne Hathaway broke it down on The Late Show last night after some intense badgering by David Letterman. Which means that Letterman officially accomplished what Graydon Carter and all of Vanity Fair's pull could not: putting Hathaway on the spot.
Clip after the jump (fun stuff starts in around 2:40):
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The tragic tale of star-crossed lovers Raffaello Follieri and Anne Hathaway finally, blessedly, came to a close today, as Raffaello plead guilty to all 14 criminal counts of fraud and money-laundering that the government slapped on his ass after the Italian swindled Ron Burkle and other dupes out of millions.
The relationship has been over for months now, but the movie star handed W magazine a PR coup by refusing to talk to any press during the entire investigation — even when Vanity Fair couldn't resist opening their profile on the Italian with a nod to Hathaway — and then coordinating a photoshoot and interview with the fashion glossy, which, like Follieri's plea, hit this week. And damn, girl is classy: CONTINUED »
Italian grifter Raffaello Follieri is reportedly close to reaching a plea deal in his federal criminal case. According to the Wall Street Journal, Follieri will plead guilty to fraud and money laundering, charges for which he could face four to five years in prison.
You'll recall that just two years ago, Follieri was living a life of milk and honey in WASPy yachts and luxury Manhattan apartments. He even got himself a famous girlfriend, actress Anne Hathaway, despite looking like a damn Disney-movie villain.
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Graydon Carter has such a hard on right now, as Vanity Fair releases its most Vanity Fair-esque piece to date on the defrauded, jet-setting Raffaello Follieri. What makes the seven-page article so perfectly VF, with its mix of celebrity and scandal and a dash of eau de creep? CONTINUED »
You know why employees shouldn't keep blogs? Because inevitably their employers will find them, read them, and use them against their underlings. It's the same reasoning why starlets shouldn't keep diaries: Because federal officials might raid the home of your scandal-plagued ex-boyfriend, confiscate your journals, and then use your words to prosecute him for fraud. Such is the new saga for Anne Hathaway, whose secret scribblings are now in the possession of the FBI. Why she left them at Raffaello Follieri's $37,500-a-month Trump Tower residence (that he didn't pay for out of his own pocket, of course), is anyone's guess. Let's just hope that the line, "Dear Diary, Raffaello is taking me on an all-expenses-paid holiday to St. Tropez" isn't followed by "and we hope Ron Burkle doesn't notice the charge."
In what promises to be more weeks and months of forcing folks like us to report on him, celebrity ex-boyfriend and accused professional swindler Raffaello Follieri might score himself a plea deal. Follieri, who's sitting behind bars because he could not find anyone to pay the $21 million bail, could serve a reduced sentence of just five to 6.5 years if he just pleads guilty and saves the public the cost of a full-blown trial. But that would involve caring about the little guy who's getting screwed out of his tax dollars, and concerning himself with matters like that isn't exactly Follieri's M.O. [NYP]
As if you expected People magazine to turn America's Victim Anne Hathaway into a knowing party to ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri's cons. "Even as some friends say they warned Hathaway about Follieri, she stuck by him for months as allegations of his wrongdoing swirled," the magazine reports. "But when Hathaway learned that Follieri's charitable foundation was under investigation by the New York State attorney general for tax irregularities, the actress broke off the relationship. Says a pal: 'That was the last straw.'" This is beautiful, touching stuff — especially when you consider what the alternative copy could've looked like: "Hathaway was an oblivious dolt who relied on her good looks to charm her way through life. She only broke off the relationship when she realized the lavish vacations would be coming to an end and the bad press could affect her career." But that's really more Star's territory, which always enjoys a nice backyard BBQ where women are served up well-done.
Bonnie Fuller, whose employment at American Media might very well consist of finding a new job, recording video segments, and blogging for Huffington Post, weighs in, as she so often does with women in peril, on Anne Hathaway, who must trudge along with promoting Get Smart while the press gleefully rips ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri to shreds. But to Fuller, who invented the "Just Like Us!" feature while running Us Weekly, Hathaway's struggle isn't about a Hollywood star down on her luck, but is instead the story of so many women who get duped by "good guys."
Yes, Ms. Hathaway's multi-million dollar swindling scam of a relationship makes her just like us! CONTINUED »
We can only imagine that Raffaello Follieri — who does not yet even have his own Wikipedia page! — has been cut off from his normal source of funds, the Follieri Group, which he's charged with treating as his own personal bank account, despite the fact that its balance sheet belongs to investors like Ron Burkle. That's why his $21 million bail had to be, according to a judge's orders, secured "by $16 million in cash and property and guaranteed by five financially responsible persons." [NYT]
But what if after all his supposed swindling, which involved previous charges by Burkle's Yucaipa fund of $1.3 million in "misappropriated" funds, plus federal prosecutors' charges that he's spent his investors' money lavishly on his own homes, vacations, and medical care, Follieri could still be funneling a bit of change into his bank account? CONTINUED »
After that power lunch at Michael's on Monday, Raffaello Follieri was planning to jet off to Italy on Wednesday and spend some time in Capri. He'd even scheduled a birthday party for himself with friends at a restaurant in his hometown of Foggia. Then Tuesday got in the way, what with that little 12-count indictment, his handcuffing, courtroom antics, and eventual house arrest. All of which reveals one little thing: Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend had zero idea the feds were after him. If he did, at the very least he could've moved up his travel plans, or even better, gone somewhere else beside Italy, which has an extradition agreement with the U.S. — though after the CIA flap last year, where the U.S. refused to send accused officials overseas for trial, perhaps the Italians are less willing to cooperate with American law enforcement these days. We hear Austria is lovely, and uncooperative, these days.
While Glamour's Suze Yalof Schwartz yammers on about lab-made diamonds and prints an interview with Joan Parker, brand ambassador for lab-made diamond company Gemesis, she inserts this aside: While interviewing Parker at Michael's restaurant on Monday, she sat across from embroiled and arrested businessman Raffaello Follieri, ex-bf to Anne Hathaway, who, she says, "didn't look that sad (about the break-up) or worried (about the impending arrest)." The following morning, federal agents arrested him and charged Follieri with 12 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering. Hope the Pan Roasted Atlantic Cod was delicious!
It's not that Anne Hathaway's ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri is a con artist. It's that he's a bad con-artist. How to tell? He was arrested! That's sort of the biggest criteria for finding out if a con artist is bad at his game. The second piece of criteria? Going to prison, which is where it sounds like he's headed.
Trying to buy some sway with the pope, because you told your investors you were the Church's financial manager, by donating $387,000 of your investors' cash to the Vatican? And when that didn't work, you hired a pair of monsignors to travel with you and then asked them to change into a more seniorial robe to send the impression you were down with god's No. 2? If this sounds like a caper out of one of, uh, Hathaway's movies, add to the film treatment many more hundreds of thousands of swindled funds that went toward funding a lavish lifestyle including a Trump Tower duplex, custom tailored clothes, and luxurious holiday travels, and you're really on your way to the bumbling about of Get Smart. CONTINUED »
Congratulations to the Wall Street Journal, which got through its entire lede about Italian "businessman" Raffaello Follieri, arrested today on conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges, without mentioning ex-girlfriend Anne Hathaway. [WSJ]
Though she has a new movie out called Get Smart, over the Atlantic, Anne Hathaway is still "the Devil Wears Prada star." But it's also over there that news is breaking that she's split from boyfriend-of-four-years Raffaello Follieri, whose ability to bounce a bad cheque has Ed McMahon jealous. Hathaway's fans were hoping she'd, ahem, "get smart" by the time her movie Get Smart premiered, and now it appears she may have: He was nowhere to be found at the Los Angeles premiere last night, and rumor has it they split. Meanwhile, Hathaway's next film is Rachel Getting Married, so if she was going to follow the forecasting of one movie title, it's probably best she did it with the Steve Carrell comedy.
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