Kathy Ireland is Suing Former Business Managers, Claims Decades of Financial Misconduct Resulting in Severe Debt

Kathy Ireland is suing her former business managers over allegations that they swindled millions of dollars from her, leaving her and her family deeply in debt.

The former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model launched her brand licensing company kathy ireland Worldwide (kiWW) in 1993, beginning with an exclusive deal with Kmart that included her own clothing line.

She later cut ties with the department store to become a global licensor and has been hailed as one of Forbes 50 most successful self-made women with her company generating billions in profit in 2021.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday (March 10) in Santa Barbara, Calif., Kathy and her husband Greg Olson accuse married couple Jason Winters and Erik Sterling of looting their wealth, shares Variety.

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Sterling and Winters managed the couple’s finances for more than 35 years and had gained Kathy and Greg‘s implicit trust. Kathy did not take a salary, rather, Sterling and Winters would handle her expenses and had power of attorney. They were relied upon to make investments.

They reportedly led the couple to believe that they “would never need to worry” about their finances as they were very wealthy.

But the 62-year-old business mogul began to suspect something was amiss when she tried to lend money to her son for a down payment on his home and her managers became “evasive,” claiming it would take six months to liquidate her investments.

The lawsuit states, “There is no wealth securing their retirement and their children’s futures, as they were led to believe. Instead, in the wake of Defendants’ misconduct, there was staggering debt, misused credit, secret loans, and missing funds.”

Kathy and her husband say they have had to sell their home, lost their home equity and their life insurance policies, and have been left without substantial savings.

“In short, Defendants treated Plaintiffs as their work horses and piggy banks, all the while scheming to fund their own life style,” the filing adds.

Damages could run as high as $100 million.

Kathy‘s attorney Jill Basinger says they’ve only just begun to find “the tip of the iceberg” and that Sterling and Winters “used their position of trust to enrich themselves while constantly misleading Kathy about the state of her and her family’s financial health.”

Variety notes that, last October, Winters shared a social media post claiming kiWW had “sputtered and stalled abruptly, creating chaos.”

“The ‘I will love you forever’ act went on for decades, as we sipped Jim Jones-flavored Kool Aid,” he said at the time. “We should have seen the signs. We did not. We were deceived. It’s easy to be deceived by people you trust.”

Winters then claimed they were seeking a “peaceful resolution” amid received threatening letters from lawyers.

He asserted that the conflict came from the “refusal of millionaires to cease living like billionaires, preventing others to be paid fairly.”

Find out where Kathy ranks among the richest models in the world.