Selena Gomez's answer to the fraud suit: my mother ran the company
Selena Gomez is trying to get a fraud lawsuit thrown out, as her lawyer blasts the claims as ‘absurd’ and ‘frivolous’.
There’s been a bit of a legal dust-up around Selena Gomez lately—this time over her mental health startup, Wondermind, and some unhappy investors who reckon she and her mum have been less than transparent. It’s not a melodrama for the screen, but the behind-the-scenes moves are certainly theatrical enough.
The Legal Punch-Up
Here’s the gist: two investor groups, Wondermind SRS 44 LLC and Bespoke Wondermind LLC, have lobbed a lawsuit at Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey (who’s a co-CEO at Wondermind), and their former business partner Daniella Pierson. They’re accusing the trio of misrepresenting how the company was doing—everything from how it was managed to what kind of resources and staff support it actually had. The investors, who stumped up $1.2 million, are claiming they weren’t told about the company’s money worries or its struggles to pay salaries.
Wondermind investor groups accused Selena Gomez and her partners of hiding the startup’s financial problems after they put in $1.2 million.
Word is Gomez herself pitched in more cash to help keep the business afloat when things got hairy—a move that probably won’t help the fraud accusations stick, if you ask me. But the investors say they were left in the dark about major risks, and that’s why they’ve brought this to court.
Selena Fights Back
On 26 August, Gomez’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, filed a motion to chuck out the case entirely. He went on the offensive, describing the claims as wobbly, contradictory, and—his word—‘absurd’. According to him, Gomez barely had her hands on the wheel at Wondermind. She invested a bit and held a minority stake, but apparently had nothing to do with running the show.
Here’s Rosengart laying it out in the official filing:
Although she invested in and holds a minority stake in the Company, Ms. Gomez never agreed to and did not manage the Company. Management was vested in Ms. Gomez’s mother, Mandy Teefey, and Ms. Pierson, who ran the Company as co-CEOs and board members. The Company, in turn, retained Ms. Gomez as a consultant and conferred on her the title of Chief Impact Officer (“CIO”).
Gomez’s camp doubled down elsewhere, with a rep calling the lawsuit ‘completely meritless’ and possibly even ‘frivolous’. They’re not just looking to get the case dismissed—they’re considering going after the plaintiffs for dragging Selena into something her lawyer says she probably shouldn’t have been roped into in the first place. Given that her main role was as a consultant and she wasn’t actually managing the business day to day, it’s a fair point.