Who Is Darcy LaPier?
Yeehaw!
Instagram Life in the limelight is something certain people dream about. There are kids who dream of being doctors or lawyers, sure, but then there are also those kids who practice their Oscar acceptance speech in the mirror and just can't wait to be chased down by the paparazzi someday. Unfortunately, dreams like that aren't always what they're cracked up to be.
When Darcy LaPier started out her professional life, she wanted to model and to act and her place among Hollywood's elite. Instead, she wound up being the arm candy to several incredibly rich and incredibly famous men, including Jean-Claude Van Damme. Now, she's filed for bankruptcy, but in the process, a truth she's been hiding has been revealed.
1. Van Damme's Ex Getting Sued
Oh how the mighty have apparently fallen! Or have they? It's hard to say where the truth lies in this strange tale from Hollywood land. You see, once upon a time, Jean-Claude van Damme used to be married to a woman named Darcy LaPier. You will be unsurprised to learn that once upon a time, Darcy was a model. Because this is a tale about a Hollywood marriage, you will also be unsurprised to learn that the marriage didn't work out.
Now Darcy is making headlines not for her love life, but for her bank balance. According to Darcy, she is 100% totally, broke. Picture a stock image of someone turning their pockets out, that's her. As one does when they are in dire straits, she has filed for bankruptcy and that's when things got complicated. You see, Chapter 7 Trustee Marie Henkel is in no hurry to approve her claim, saying that LaPier is deliberating trying to "hinder, delay, and defraud her creditors."
2. The Court's Not Buying It
LaPier, for her part, is playing innocent, which is kind of hard given her quasi-celebrity status. She's a person who leads a more visible life than most of us and as a result. Prior to her marriage to Van Damme fell apart, she married Ron Rice, the owner of the Hawaiian Tropic line of sun and skin care products. She was also briefly married to Mark Hughes, the man behind Herbalife, though he died just a year after they tied the knot. In short, LaPier's spent a lot of time married to or dating very rich men. It seems to Henkel that it's a stretch she now claims to have not a penny to her name.
“The Debtor invites this Court to step into a land where fiction rules over fact, feigned or intentional ignorance of financial affairs is rewarded, and a deliberate failure to retain documentation of financial transactions is not cause for concern,” wrote Henkel in the heated response she made to the filing.
3. What Did She Do?
Henkel is accusing Lapier, not just of lying about how much money she actually has, but of deliberating hiding assets. What are those, exactly? Henkel believes that LaPier deliberately went out of her way NOT to mention the fact that she received $500,000 in wire transfers from her ex Ron Rice when she applied for bankruptcy. There's evidence of those transfers, and there's also evidence of LaPier living high on the hog, or rather, on the horse.
You see, LaPier was appearing in a TV show called Rodeo Girls where she spent loads of money (on camera!) to indulge in her newest hobby: participating in the rodeo circuit. The whole thing paints a picture that has Henkel fuming. She accuses LaPier in her brief of being guilty of the following: “That multiple millions of dollars of assets simply vanished. That expensive goods were received as gifts from friends whose names have been forgotten. That the transfer of the Debtors’ home and purportedly all of the assets within it to an insider at a time she was clearly insolvent was not fraudulent. That she is unable to obtain bank statements for certain bank accounts even though she produced bank statements for other accounts at the same bank. That monthly deposits in amounts ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 (or more) from her ex-husband Ronald J. Rice made for her benefit are neither income nor deposits in which she has an interest.”
And, and the saying goes, boom goes the dynamite.
4. Rodeo Girls
The real thorn in Henkel's side is the flagrancy with which she believes LaPier has acted. It's not like she's saying that people who file for bankruptcy need to come with their hat in hands and a sorrowful look on their faces, either. But, as she points out, LaPier has given the appearance of trying to hide the truth of her situation, and that's just not fair on other people who are in need.
“In a further affront to her creditors, over the last ten years, the Debtor… has spent millions of dollars on travel expenses and purchasing, maintaining, and training horses so that she can compete in rodeos throughout the country from which she has earned only a few thousand dollars," added Henkel. Did we mention the show she did it all for, Rodeo Girls, has two stars on IMDb? Because it does. Just saying.
5. No Time For Games
There's been no rebuttal from LaPier as of yet, but as she is being accused of over a decade's worth of fraud it will probably take her some time to get her story straight. She better do it quickly too, because it's clear the fine folks overseeing her bankruptcy case have no intention of letting her pull yet another fast one over on them.
“Her actions since 2008 have been calculated to deceive. The Debtor is not an ‘honest but unfortunate debtor,’ (rather) she is a person who is focused on continuing her decadent lifestyle at the expense of her creditors and without regard for the integrity of this Court. The Debtor does not deserve a discharge," says the filing, not mincing words.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. Her work focuses on relationships, pop culture and news. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.