Summary: Jessica Simpson said two men targetted her father, Joe Simpson, and tried to weasel $12 million out of their family.
Jessica Simpson is countersuing Jeffrey Bowler and Bret Saxon. According to The Blast, the two men sued Simpson for an unpaid finder’s fee, but she said that they were “professional con men” who tried to scam her and her father out of $12 million on a business deal.
Simpson said that Bowler and Sexton met her father, Joe Simpson, randomly in Beverly Hills in 2010. The two men befriended Joe, and Jessica said she believed they viewed him as an easy mark and someone who they could use to gain access to Jessica.
In 2014, Jessica began talking with the Sequential Brands Group about purchasing a stake in her company, With You, Inc. She said that Bowler and Saxon learned of the deal and tried to insert themselves into it. In her lawsuit, Jessica said that the two scammers asked Joe to put them in contact with Jessica’s business manager, David Levin; and after that, Saxon arranged a meeting between Sequential and Levin.
Saxon and Bowler said that because they arranged the meeting between Sequential and Levin that they were entitled to a 10% finder’s fee. The deal was finalized in 2015 for $120 million, and the two men sued Jessica, saying she refused to pay up.
But recently, Jessica, 37, countersued. In her lawsuit, she said that Levin and her father had not agreed to pay the two men a finder’s fee, and she said that Sequential had already paid Saxon $250,000.
The two parties have been fighting in court since the deal, and the Simpson family so far have refused to pay anything. Jessica is seeking unspecified damages in her countersuit.
Jessica was introduced to the public in the late 1990s as a singer, and she had hit songs such as “I Want To Love You Forever.” But the singer’s career really took off after she landed a MTV reality show with her then-husband Nick Lachey. Jessica became a household name thanks to her dim-witted but sweet persona, and she parlayed that image into a fashion brand that is now worth almost $1 billion.
Jessica’s clothing, shoes, and accessories line are sold in department stores, and her personal net worth is valued at almost $150 million.