Selena Gomez is pushing back against accusations that she defrauded investors behind the mental health startup Wondermind.
About two weeks prior, Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey, and The Newsette founder, Daniella Pierson, were sued by investors who claim they pumped nearly $1.2 million into Wondermind, which launched in 2021, and were fed false promises about the company’s infrastructure, leadership, and resources as the company collapsed. The trio, who founded the startup, were sued for securities fraud, common law fraud, and breach of contract.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Gomez filed a motion to dismiss the artist from the suit, and said she should have never been dragged into the case in the first place. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Mathew S. Rosengart, an attorney for Gomez, said the claims against her are “completely meritless if not frivolous.”
Rosengart continued: “The notion that Selena engaged in ‘fraud’ or any other wrongdoing is absurd—and in addition to filing our motion we are exploring other avenues of relief for Ms. Gomez including sanctions against plaintiffs for improperly including her.”
In the motion obtained by Rolling Stone, the plaintiffs’ “vague, generalized, and contradictory allegations concerning Selena Gomez demonstrate that Ms. Gomez could not possibly have engaged in any ‘fraud’ (she did not), is not liable to Plaintiffs (she is not) and, as a matter of law, must be dismissed from this lawsuit.”
The filing further states that according to the lawsuit itself, Gomez “did not communicate with Plaintiffs, was not involved in Wondermind, Inc.’s (the “Company”) securities offerings, and was not in a position to control the acts and communications of the Company.”
In the lawsuit, investors alleged they were led to believe that a groundbreaking Wondermind app would be made, advertising deals would be struck, and celebrity cover stories were already underway. Instead, the complaint claimed, “for three years, while the Company quietly collapsed around them, not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors whose money was funding the collapse.”
In the motion to dismiss, Rosengart said that while Gomez “agreed to support her mother Mandy Teefey” and invested in and holds a minority stake in Wondermind, the star “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”),” stated the filing.
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