Gambling, Lies, and Millions Stolen from Celebrities

“Today, I no longer carry resentments. I no longer blame anyone else for the choices I made. I accept them. I own them.” - Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

What happens when the drive to succeed masks deep emotional wounds and addiction? In this episode, Jonathan Schwartz shares a powerful and painfully honest account of how his life unraveled. 

Once one of Hollywood’s most trusted financial advisors, Jonathan worked with icons like Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, and Gwyneth Paltrow. On the surface, he had it all. But underneath the success was a secret struggle with gambling and drug addiction that led him to steal millions from the very clients who trusted him most. 

His fall from grace was dramatic and public, ending in a prison sentence and the loss of everything he had built. But that wasn’t the end of his story. Today, Jonathan is sober and rebuilding his life with purpose. As Program Director at Altus Rehab, he now helps others find their own way out of addiction and shame. His story is raw, real, and full of hard-earned wisdom for anyone who has ever felt like they couldn’t ask for help.

“I thought I had a moral compass. I thought I had integrity. But clearly, my behavior was not congruent with that.” - Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

Show Notes:

• [01:30] Jonathan is a different person from who he was. He grew up in Upstate New York and his father left when he was four. His mom had a lot of stress and took it out on him which created childhood trauma.
• [03:34] Accounting was the subject that he was good at.
• [05:02] Eventually, his cousin gave him a job working in Los Angeles for celebrities.
• [06:33] In 2004, he became a partner in GSO business management. He got a break when Linkin Park was looking for someone in business management. Their success opened up the floodgates.
• [08:37] He began getting more and more A-list clients.
• [09:04] In 2010, he became addicted to gambling.
• [10:01] This eventually led to embezzlement from his celebrity clients. He placed the bet with this bookie everyday for 6 years.
• [13:48] He ended up embezzling about 7 million dollars.
• [14:12] When he stopped gambling he had suicidal ideation.
• [17:05] He always intended to pay the money back.
• [19:37] Jonathan shares a time when the bank wanted to call Alanis. 
• [21:03] There was a point when his partners started to notice something wasn't right.
• [22:04] In 2015 he was fired by Alanis, but he continued to give his attention to his A-list clients.
• [24:42] He didn't want to expose anyone to the fact that he was committing crime. He never told a soul.
• [25:07] The dark secret was eating him inside, and he also had to deal with his unresolved trauma.
• [27:12] How Jonathan had to come clean with his wife, because he was scheduled for a lie detector test.
• [28:48] After failing the test, he was facing 23 years in prison. He negotiated a four to six year plea agreement.
• [31:14] He ended up being released early because of COVID.
• [32:11] He struggled to get a job and ended up going back to school, and now he's a marriage and family therapist with an emphasis on addiction and trauma.
• [34:00] In prison he had the opportunity to reflect on his bad decisions and read a lot of books.
• [36:33] He's proud to be sober and a nerd. His trauma is resolved, and he gets to help people in treatment not make the same mistakes that he made.
• [41:34] Celebrities today need to understand not to trust their business manager so quickly and to make sure that they're proactive in their financial affairs and that they're asking for source documents.
• [42:11] Audit your business manager with some level of frequency.
• [48:43] Don't go out and spend all your money. Treat your first dollars as your last dollars.
• [50:56] Jonathan has a book coming out in about 12 months.

“I never told a single soul about the crime I was committing, about the addiction I had. Not my wife, not my kids, not my mother, not my best friend.” - Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review. 

Links and Resources:

• Podcast Web Page
• Facebook Page
• whatismyipaddress.com
• Easy Prey on Instagram
• Easy Prey on Twitter
• Easy Prey on LinkedIn
• Easy Prey on YouTube
• Easy Prey on Pinterest
• Jonathan Schwartz – Instagram
• Jonathan Schwartz – Altus Rehab
• Jonathan Schwartz – LinkedIn
• Altus Rehab
• Gamblers Anonymous

Transcript:

Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the Easy Prey Podcast today.

Oh, thank you for having me on your lovely podcast.

Thank you. Could you give me and the audience a little bit of background about who you are.

Who I am and who I was, two different people. I'll start with who I was. I grew up in upstate New York. Four years old, my father abandoned my mom, myself, and my younger brother. That forced my mom to be a single parent at a young age when she really wasn't even ready for motherhood or parenthood or being let alone a single parent.

She had to take three jobs to put food on the table, a roof over our head, and she had a lot of stress, and she took that stress out on me, which created my childhood trauma that remained suppressed for 46 of my 55 years of life.

That childhood trauma, I believe, as there's evidence-based literature to support my belief, contributed to my ultimate addictions as well as my maladaptive behaviors. I do not use that as an excuse. I own the poor choices I've made, but it did help me in grad school to understand sort of why I did what I did. How could I act the way I acted and violate the fiduciary responsibility I had and so on and so forth.

I grew up, still to this day, remember, about 5% of my childhood. I went to three different colleges, but once again, consumed the instability in my life. I married my high school sweetheart when I was 24, we had our first child. I have three beautiful sons today. They're adult sons.

I started working after graduating college. I called up one of my cousins. I have seven CPAs in the family. One of them happened to be in the entertainment music business management space. Very well respected.

I called them because, frankly, in high school and college, the only subject that I was good at was accounting. I wasn't one of the A students, but in accounting, I seemed to get an A in.

I called up my cousin after I graduated college and I said, “Cousin, I'm ready to come work for you.” He said, “No, you're not.” He said, “You're immature. You’re irresponsible. What do you know about business management in the entertainment world? I suggest you go work for a public accounting firm, own your analytical skills, and when I think you're ready, Jonathan, I'll give you a call.”

I took a job working in San Francisco, which was the third and final college I attended at San Francisco State where I got my degree. I worked for a sole practitioner, a small CPA firm, where I really was getting a lot of opportunities to work in diverse areas, whether it was auditing, tax work, financial statement analysis. In hindsight, that was a really great suggestion that my cousin made.

Three-and-a-half, four years, goes by and he gives me a call and he says, “You're ready to come to Los Angeles.” At this point in my life, I had a wife and one of my three sons. We packed up our little Honda Accord and we drove down south to Los Angeles. I was the first one in his office, the last one to leave. I did not want nepotism associated with me. I didn't get paid very much money, but I looked at it as an opportunity to the alternative to going to grad school that at that point would've been taking out a FAFSA loan.

I looked at it like I'm getting a stipend and I'm learning from one of my mentors, someone who I could really learn from. I was always a person that took a big picture vision. I wasn't seeking at this point short-term gratification or a vision that was just limited to short term because now I had responsibilities. I was a father of one, soon became a father of two and three, and a wife.

Needless to say, I worked for him. I spent a lot of time in the mail room opening up folders and files on clients, learning that way how we handle as business managers of clients in totality. In 1999, fast forward, his firm was acquired by Chase Manhattan Bank, now known as JP Morgan.

He asked me if I wanted to get into investment banking, family wealth management, and I said, “Cous, I love you. Thank you for the opportunities that you afforded myself and my family and the knowledge that you imparted upon me. I really appreciate that. But with your blessing, I'd like to take a small book of business and join another business management firm.”

He granted me that blessing and approval to take a few clients with me. In 2000, I joined GSO Business Management, that’s the firm I went to. Ultimately, I became a partner, not immediately, likely about four years from there. Around 2004 is when I likely became a partner, and that was the start of me making seven figures a year.

Not really having any addictions at this time, but still I had not dealt with my childhood trauma so I still had a lot of insecurity inside me, low self-esteem, and presented to the outer world that I was some sort of success even though deep down inside I didn't feel that way.

I got a really lucky break about quarter three of the year 2000 when a band by the name of Linkin Park was searching for business management, and myself and my former partner, Michael, took the meeting and they really liked the combination. At this time, I didn't have gray hair, so I was considered the young guy and he was considered the old guy. They loved that sort of young, youthful energy that I had and his wisdom that he had, and he ultimately became my mentor.

They decided to hire us before their first album Hybrid Theory was released in November of 2000. That just opened up the floodgates for me because the success that they had selling the number of albums back then, it was called albums. They were able to sell in that decade—I think the 2000 decade for them was the leading artist in selling albums.

They just shot right out of the box right from the get-go of their very first performance. They're an incredibly talented band, and I had so much respect for them because they taught me how to be a great business manager.

They taught me the skills that I needed to learn still and the expectations that they created I welcomed. Because if I were in their shoes, I would expect my business manager to perform this way.

From there I just started getting more and more A-list clients, and before you knew it, I probably had one of the top three books of business in terms of the clients, and not because of who I was or who I was at that time, but because of the clients. You're as good as your clients, let's face it.

I was fortunate enough and blessed to have these clients. Then in 2010, I started really becoming addicted to gambling. I don't know if you want me to go there now.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

OK. In 2010, I meet this assistant coach of mine in the Agora Hills where I was coaching my kids to use sports teams and he asked me if I wanted to gamble and I'm like, “Sure, a $50 bet. No problem.” Mind you, at this point, I was high net worth. I had sufficient money to buy the bet $50, if you will. That first week of betting with him. I lost $25,000. I should have taken the $25,000 from my own account, but I came up with one of my many, what I call brilliant, ideas. Let me “borrow” money from, in this case, Alanis Morrisette. I'm using Alanis simply because she went public with this and it's not a secret. A handful of other victims, direct victims of my embezzlement, I want to honor their request to keep them sealed and because they don't deserve that.

Alanis didn't deserve it frankly, so instead of—I didn't want my wife to find out I was taking money from our accounts, I didn't want the bookkeeper who was responsible in my office to pay my bills to find out. I didn't want my partners to find out. I didn't want anybody, frankly, to find out.

I didn't realize at that point the importance of asking for help. Because now that became the first week, then it became months, then it became years, and for every day, for almost six years, I placed a bet with my [inaudible 00:10:38] and I couldn't sleep at night knowing that I was violating the fiduciary responsibility that I had to my clients. I thought I had a moral compass. I thought I had integrity. But this—but clearly my behavior was not congruent with that.

I couldn't sleep at night knowing that I was violating the fiduciary responsibility that I had to my clients. I thought I had a moral compass. I thought I had integrity. But this—but clearly my behavior was not congruent with that.… Share on X

What happened, because I've known a few situations where people have gotten into gambling and it was a very slow creep into larger numbers. Did you get into that first $25,000 the first week just because you had access to money, or was there something about that first week that was like, “I don't have $25,000 that I can afford to lose in a week”? I'm curious about how that happened, how that transition happened in such a short period of time. Because if you hadn't gambled before, then it seems like a pretty big leap.

I had two short windows of gambling. One was in college where we thought one of the genius ideas I had back then was to be a bookie for the fraternity and the Greek system, and we lost. We're the only bookie on the planet that lost money because we didn't know how to do the vig and all that.

That genius idea, we lost $10,000. I was responsible for five of my fraternity brothers, another five. Instead of paying it, because I grew up poor, I left there and went to another college and left him responsible to pay $10,000, which was sort of like now the onset of a pattern escaping reality and escaping my responsibilities.

The second time was when I was at my cousin's firm. His partner allowed me to place a bet. I lost $3,000. He paid for it, thankfully, because guess I said I wasn't making money at that point. This $50 bet that I placed in 2010 just didn't do anything for me. Like, “OK, I have $50. I mean, OK if I win it. If I lose it, OK.”

Then I just, I just wanted a little bit more juice. Not necessarily a dopamine rush, but I just wanted to have more mean larger bets. That's how the bets became enormous in that week. It was a few thousand dollars.

But I was the type of sports bet that I didn't bet on a single game, let's say the NFL. I bet on every game on the board. Not just who would win or lose, but the totals, parlays, teasers. In the height, for lack of a better word, in my addiction and in my degenerate gambling behavior, I was probably betting $250,000 a day on a weekend.

Oh my goodness.

Ultimately, that led to the government saying it was $21 million when I turned over the phone records to them that I gambled at a gross level, resulting in a net loss of about $7-plus million. That's what I embezzled from clients, the $7 million.

I wish I had the courage to ask for strength a lot sooner than five or six years from the onset.

About sometime in early 2015, I think I really stopped. At that point, I started to have suicidal ideation. I just couldn't sleep at night for six years, and there wasn't a single day that I didn't place a bet. Now I'm really just like, “What am I doing here, Jonathan? You're really going to hurt your family, your kids that you love so much. Your wife and your mother who's battling stage four lung cancer and your brother and just everybody was hurt.”

I hurt countless people by my poor choices, and I just wanted to think about what would happen if I would just commit suicide and kill myself. Thankfully, I was able to identify reasons to live. Clearly my children, first and foremost, my mom, my wife at that time, my brother and some others. Thankfully, I didn't do that.

Let's take a step back and go back to the results of the first $25,000 loss weekend. Then you were talking about how you wanted to hide it from those around you and so you went to one of your client's accounts. How did the process kind of go from there?

I had power of attorney with my clients’ accounts. Monday through Sunday was called the gambling week. End of the last football NFL game on a Sunday night. I now know how much I owe my bookie on Tuesday. That night was worse than all the other previous nights because now I have to decide what I am going to say to the bank on Monday as to why Client A needs money.

Why am I gonna create again and again and again and again for all these years and the fear I had of getting caught, hearing sirens when I'm walking around thinking they're coming to get me, worried about the FBI's listening to my phone. I just was catastrophizing and negative thinking that the world was just ultimately gonna collapse on me, which it eventually did.

That's how I had access to request the transfers of money and have the cash delivered to me in my office so that I can go downstairs and meet the bookie in the garage of our office building.

I guess there's two questions that come to my mind. I'll ask them both and you can decide how to answer them. One is I've interviewed people that investigate fraud for small businesses and it's often the accountant who's stealing the money for similar reasons or I had this financial thing. Was your mindset always, “My next win is gonna pay this back, and then I can put the money back in the account”?

Then, how did you justify to the bank all the cash? Because I know moving around cash can be complicated as opposed to just wire transferring.

Sure. The first question, my intent was never to steal the money. My intent was the moment that I decided to take $25,000 from Alanis, my intent was to pay it back the next week. The problem is as the amounts that I bet became larger and larger each day that went by, now what am I gonna do? Because I really should have just taken it from my personal account.

I was not getting a dopamine rush. I lived in constant fear whether I won or I lost. Neither was appropriate. Neither felt good because if I won, that's just making me believe that now I can actually win more. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

I don't know why I did not. Because the mind of a gambler is that grandiosity, and I'm just gonna win it back and I'll pay her right then and there. I won't gamble again because the truth is as years went on, I very much—and I hate using this word—but hated to gamble. I was not getting a dopamine rush. I lived in constant fear whether I won or I lost. Neither was appropriate. Neither felt good because if I won, that's just making me believe that now I can actually win more.

I was chasing, and that's common for a gambler. I was chasing. That's the only reason why I bet because I so badly wanted to pay back my clients. Again, I should have taken it from my account. I didn't. I didn't realize it was ultimately $7 million.

I was not getting a dopamine rush. I lived in constant fear whether I won or I lost. Neither was appropriate. Neither felt good because if I won, that's just making me believe that now I can actually win more. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

But to your second question, I concocted a lie literally every Monday when I called the bank.

The lie consisted of So and So needs the money and I need $35,000 delivered to me. And when they asked me why So and So needs the money, I would say she's going into the studio today to deal with a producer, and he gave her a better rate if it was just cash versus on the books, or So and So wants to make improvements in their house and they wanna pay the contractor in cash to get a lower rate.

Honestly, I cannot tell you how many lies I had to create to get away with this. That dishonesty and manipulation is what's very common in addiction and certainly became common for me during my years of active addiction.

Honestly, I cannot tell you how many lies I had to create to get away with this. That dishonesty and manipulation is what's very common in addiction and certainly became common for me during my years of active addiction. -Jonathan… Share on X

Did the banks ever throw up red flags to you about why you are taking so much cash?

Absolutely. In fact, one of the times that was probably a few years into it, they said, “Well, we really discussed this and we're concerned and we wanna call, let's say, Alanis.” I played poker with them. I said, “You can call Alanis, fine, but let me tell you what happens. If you call Alanis, she's gonna fire you for bothering her.”

I mean, this is my poker face. I didn't play poker, but you can understand what I'm saying.” If you do that and she fires me, I'm gonna be really upset at you guys.” Turning it on them, so they never did.

My clients, I was told by many of my employees when I returned into society that they knew that I was taking money, but because I was the reigning man, the person bringing in their business, they looked the other way.

Now I'm here to say I don't know if that's factual. My partners were great people. They did not deserve any of this. I lied to their face at the end of this run and when the story begins later. I adored and respected my partners, and those are people who I hired as well, and I hired the 75 employees that I had.

But that's sort of why, to your question, the bank left me alone and my partners left me alone until they received this phone call.

Did your partners know something was amiss and they were just kind of ignoring it as well, or holding you at arm’s distance, or did they not even notice?

Apparently, they noticed at some point midway in my run, or toward three quarters of my way in my run, and they just looked the other way. Maybe because they didn't want to believe it. I don't know the answer to that.

Today, I only speak the truth, so I really don't know. I wish that they would've approached me sooner. There was one time where they approached me and I just dismissed it and said, “I don't know what you guys are talking about.”

But ultimately, in 2015, Alanis fired me. She fired me because I was not giving her the attention I used to give her. I know this sounds really arrogant, and today with humility, I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but at that point, Alanis wasn't relevant in the marketplace. The Jagged Little Pill was over a long time ago.

I did give my attention to the A-list clients. More so than I did her. She fired me and then she went and hired, ironically, with no pun intended, my cousin who I started my career with, who left Chase, opened up his own business management office again, and she hired his partner.

His partner called my former partners and said, “Alanis doesn't know where this $4.6 million is that shows cash withdrawals,” and so they called me. I happened to be in rehearsals with Beyonce, who I also represented in Tampa Bay, and she was preparing for her Lemonade tour and I got the call and they said, “What's with this $4.6 million?”

I said, “I don't know. Alanis knows it. She wanted to invest in a cannabis business.” Another one of my many lies through this window of addiction. I said, “I'll come back.” They asked me to come back and have a meeting with them so now I have to tell Beyonce that, “I'm sorry, but I'm leaving for personal reasons. I'll be back.”

Still in denial. Still in incredible denial. Still being dishonest, still being manipulative, still believing I can get away with this, which inevitably I knew I could not. I fly back to LA and I'm meeting with them and their lawyers.

Now this is becoming real. This was probably the second or third of one more genius idea that I came up with in my lifetime. I said to them, “Why don't you just give me a lie detector test? Just give me a lie detector test.” I tried to play poker with them, but that didn't work.

What happened is now I'm starting to get a little bit more fearful every evening, aside from the fear that I already established on a day-in and a nightly basis. I decided in early May to take my wife of 23 years because this happened in April of ’16.

Now at the end of April of ’16, maybe early May, I will go for a weekend to Santa Barbara, California, and we're celebrating our 23rd anniversary. The one important thing is I've never told a single soul about the crime that I was committing, about the addiction that I had. Literally not a single soul, which also is one of the reasons why I said earlier, for six years, I cannot sleep and I'm living in fear because I didn't wanna expose anybody to know that I was committing a crime. I didn't want anyone to ultimately become a co-conspirator because I knew of an inevitable [inaudible 00:24:47] I was gonna get caught.

I didn't tell my wife. I didn't tell my children. I didn't tell my mom. I didn't tell my best friend. I didn't tell my friends from childhood. I didn't tell my partners. Obviously, I didn't tell anybody. I'm holding this dark secret, eating at me inside, and yet I hadn't dealt with my unresolved trauma.

Now I get a call from my partner and he says that, “We want you to come down on Sunday”—whatever day it was—“May 8th, 2016.” My anniversary date was May 9th, 2016 that we were celebrating. We want you to drive down tomorrow to Beverly Hills to meet one of the leading retired FBI agent polygraphers. I said, “Sure.”

Now I'm doing cocaine and gambling while I'm saying sure to him. I hung up the phone totally high and now I have to tell my wife the truth. Now I must come clean because why am I leaving tomorrow on a weekend that we're supposed to be celebrating our 23-year anniversary so I tell her the truth. “I, for six years, embezzled $7 million, and I have been keeping this secret from everybody, and I've made some really poor choices. I cheated on you.”

I was not a good husband. I thought I was a great father, but I really wasn't a great father because if I really was a great father, I not only would've been physically present for my three beautiful sons, but I would've been emotionally present. But because of my addictions, I was not emotionally present most of the time.

Now, I decide as a genius, I'm going to Google how to beat the lie detector test. This is the kind of schmuck I was. How am I going to take the lie detector test? But I thought I could, right? Because I'm on cocaine and so I Google how to take a lie detector test.

I leave the next morning, I say goodbye to her and say, “Honey, please enjoy the spa. I'll be back.” The whole one-and-a-half-hour drive, I'm snorting lines of cocaine, infinite amounts of cocaine. I'm placing a bet with my bookie. This day was May 8th, 2016 because May 9th, 2016 is my sober day.

I drive down, I walk into the polygraphers office with complete arrogance, and I put my feet up on his desk. I lay back on my chair and I’m, like, building this rapport with him. I'm thinking that I'm really gonna win because this guy likes me.

Well, the part that I must not have researched well enough on how to do the lie detector test is he's the one that's building a rapport with me, trying to make me feel comfortable so when he hooks me up to the lie detector test, I'm gonna have a baseline.

Well, the baseline wasn't a very good baseline. I take the test, I still think I pass it, I leave. I get in my car, I call my wife. I say, “I'm coming back. Let's have a nice dinner. How was your day?” And I get to the hotel and I try momentarily to access my office computer and I'm no longer able to access my office computer.

I call my assistant and say, “Are you able to access the computer?” And she said, “Yes.” I said, “Oh boy.” I called my attorney who was Nathan Hockman. He is now Los Angeles District Attorney. He said, “Jonathan, you failed that test worse than anybody in this polygrapher’s career.”

Now the moment has really hit me. This is one of my rock-bottom moments and so I said, “What does that exactly mean that I failed the test?” “Well,” he said, “Jonathan, it means you need to come see me tomorrow because you're facing 23 years in federal prison.” The fears became just awful.

We went down to meet with him the next day, and thankfully he was able to negotiate a four-to-six year plea agreement with the prosecutor. That was still a lot of years for me, for someone who never thought he'd be in prison. I still didn't believe at this point because I was still in denial that I should be in prison.

But the truth is, as I sit here with you and talk with you on your lovely podcast, I deserved everything that I received. The consequences were severe to others based on my poor choices, and so they weren't as severe as they could have been for me relative to my sentencing, but they certainly have been severe to the challenges that I've had to overcome. But I do not play the self-pity or victim role. I embraced each challenge according to the principles of the 12 steps.

On May 3rd, 2017, I was sentenced to six years. I went to Sheridan Oregon Federal Prison Camp where I waited a couple years to take the RDAP program, which is a residential drug and alcohol program.

After that, a year came off my sentence, and thankfully I transferred to the only private federal prison at the time in Taft, which is near Bakersfield. I was on a US Marshall plane, the con airplane was shackled and was very uncomfortable, but I got to prison. Before I was transferred to Taft, they put you in this detention center, which was in Pahrump, and I'm there for a month and that was an awful experience.

Then I got picked up by Taft and went there, and it was certainly better than the Bureau of Prisons, who are the officers and employees of the camps. These were more private COS, correction officers, and they treated us with a little bit more respect.

We weren't identified by our ID numbers, we were identified as a name. It doesn't mean we enjoyed being there as inmates, but it was certainly better than where I was previously.

On April 16th, 2020, I was released early because it was COVID. I was put on 16 months of home confinement with an ankle monitor, followed by three years of probation, supervised release.

I thought when I came home, when I re-entered society, that I was well-educated and I was humble. I couldn't get a job, as I was labeled as a felon. I took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, and I got fired there after two months because I was not mopping the floors or cleaning the countertops well.

But frankly, I needed additional humility, and I'm grateful for that opportunity. From there I decided that I needed to find my passion, and my passion was to become of service to my brothers and sisters who are struggling with addiction and mental health so I decided to go to addiction study school and get my CADAC and decided to go to grad school to become a marriage and family therapist with an emphasis in addiction and trauma, and that's what I do today.

How difficult was the transition of going from, I guess, from arrest until the end of the trial was, what, about a year?

It was 14 months of pre-sentencing, and then the judge allowed me to not be remanded in the courtroom and be taken immediately to a courthouse or jail where they would hold me until they decided to transfer me. I was grateful for the judge allowing me to stay two more months and not surrender until July 11th, 2017 because I really wanted to spend time with my younger son before he went away for summer camp. Thankfully, I was granted that.

I was the only inmate of about 450 inmates that likely cried for six months consecutively. I was not as prepared as I thought I would be mentally. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

I flew up to Sheridan, Oregon on July 10th. Spent the night in a hotel and surrendered on the 11th of 2017. It was scary. I was the only inmate of about 450 inmates that likely cried for six months consecutively. I was not as prepared as I thought I would be mentally.

I was counting the days, 72 months, and the days, and thankfully one of my dearest friends today, who I met in prison, approached me and he said, “You've got to stop crying, and you’ve got to stop counting the days.”

What I decided to do is I will count the number of Super Bowls that I have in prison, and that was a lot more tolerable for me to accept. I don't sit here with PTSD from prison, but prison gave me an opportunity to reflect on all of my bad decisions. It gave me an opportunity to read a lot of books and soul search and the people that I hurt to reflect on those people and to make amends to many of them when I return to society.

The one thing that I learned, there is surrendering to a power greater than myself, which is—this is recovery talk. I'll try and keep it short on that, but I'm a person who really, today, is immersed in Gamblers Anonymous. I was the co-chairman of Los Angeles Intergroup for Gamblers Anonymous. I was the secretary another year.

I make commitments. I just took my May 9th cake at my meeting and my younger son, who was home from college, came with me and to hear him tell me afterward that he's proud of me was one of the most beautiful things I've heard in probably nine years.

I'm still building back the relationship with my two older boys. They aren't ready to have a relationship with me. Today, in recovery, I respect that they're adults because even though they know how much I love them, I hurt them. Who am I to judge how long it's gonna take?

What I do is I just pray every day to my higher power and I ask him to please put them back in my life when he tells me they're ready to come back in my life, because they would be talking to me if I didn't do what I did.

That's why I don’t carry any resentments. I no longer carry resentments. I no longer blame everyone else for all the choices I made. I accept all those choices, and I own it. That's part of my message today to people is personal accountability, owning your side of the street. I do a good job doing that.

I no longer carry resentments. I no longer blame everyone else for all the choices I made. I accept all those choices, and I own it. That's part of my message today to people is personal accountability, owning your side of the… Share on X

Like I said earlier, I'm proud of who I've become and who I'm becoming. Every day, this is a program of progress. I'm far from perfect. But today, if I make mistakes, which of course I do—I’m human—they’re minuscule in comparison to the mistakes I just described in your podcast.

There are mistakes that are simple. I might forget to close my refrigerator door when I go to work and I come home and my food's melted. OK, big deal.

Today, I'm a nerd. I love to call myself a nerd. I'm proud to call myself a nerd, and today I'm sober and I'm proud to call myself sober. I'm proud to live a life on a daily basis where I can recognize my own progress by invalidating myself rather than seeking validation from others, which I did in act of addiction as a big people pleaser.

I have now worked on my trauma. It's resolved, and I get to help people in treatment today not make the same mistakes that I've made and to learn how to ask for help. To do things differently than I did and to deal with any unresolved trauma or adverse experiences as a child. Let's deal with that when you come into the treatment center, Altus Rehab, and let's get you the help so that when you leave here, you have no unresolved issues.

Because those issues, if they remain unresolved, no matter how many relapse prevention skills we can teach you, your likelihood of a relapse is pretty possible. But if you leave here with resolved issues, the likelihood of you maintaining a sustainable recovery is strong.

Is the sustainable recovery from alcohol or drugs and gambling kind of about the same recovery rates?

Yes, I mean, gambling is a behavioral addiction, whereas the others are substance-use disorders. Now you add co-occurring mental health to either one. We also have to deal with the mental health component of course, as well. But yeah, I mean, statistically, gambling has the highest correlation of any addiction to suicidality.

I often go to treatment centers and I put up on one half of a whiteboard the triggers for people who are addicted—what triggers their addiction?

I also put up what contributes to someone having suicidal thoughts or ideation. The answer is, for the most part, they're exactly alike and that's what's sad. Because with gambling, you're dealing with your own finances. It's money.

With substances, you're destroying your mind as well by putting chemicals into your body and mind. I had coronary artery disease. There was no reason I should be using cocaine and addicted to cocaine waking up with my heart racing and my sheets stoked. That's why the people who assessed me, the professionals said, “You were likely thinking about having suicidal ideation,” and I was.

But to answer your question, yes, I think statistically the relapse percentages are pretty much all aligned.

Got you. From the podcast perspective, a bit of a shift here is from your client's perspective. What were some of the warning signs that they could have acted on, or should have, or should have seen, or could have seen? I don't wanna blame them. I wanna be careful about not blaming them for what you did, but what were the warning signs that they could have seen and the questions that they could have asked that might have brought this to light significantly sooner?

Sure. I'll answer that by sharing a little story. When Alanis was looking for a business manager. She interviewed—I’m making this up—half a dozen or more business manager candidates, and myself included. I brought with me these visual aids. “Here's what I'm gonna present to you before you say yes or no to a tour. Here’s what it looks like. Here's the profit margin. We and I collaborate with you, and ultimately you decide. Here's how I would a financial budget for you personally, and so on and so forth.”

Well, she hired me and I understood that she hired me because I brought visual aids. OK, now go fast forward into my years of addiction. I meet with her every week. I'm presenting those same spreadsheets to her. The operative word is spreadsheets. Had she asked me for a source document, i.e., a bank statement to reconcile with those spreadsheets I presented, I would've been caught. But because she trusted me, I was not asked for that.

But every month that I went there, I feared that she would ask me. I wish she did because maybe she would've done that in year one and this wouldn't have been $7 million, it would've been $400,000. Both are wrong, but my sentence would've been less and the likelihood of me maybe continuing in that industry maybe would've been OK. Maybe I would've had to go to a treatment center or whatever.

Celebrities today need to understand not to trust their business manager so quickly and to make sure that they're proactive in their financial affairs and that they're asking for source documents. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

But that's what is missing today in the business management community, and I'll be talking about that a lot in my book and ultimately in my movie where people will understand. Celebrities today need to understand not to trust their business manager so quickly and to make sure that they're proactive in their financial affairs and that they're asking for source documents.

Not knowing the industry, are there unrelated counterparts that you can, as an artist or a client that you can, “OK, I'm gonna hire this person from this firm and then someone else from another firm to kind of—should I be hiring an auditor,” so to speak?

Yes, 100%. You should audit your business manager with some level of frequency every year, every other year. But the one thing that they should also do is not give 100% power of attorney over to their business manager to sign the checks. With today's technology, there should be a dual signature on all checks over a certain balance.

You should audit your business manager with some level of frequency every year, every other year. But the one thing that they should also do is not give 100% power of attorney over to their business manager to sign the checks.… Share on X

Or cash withdrawals. 

Exactly. If those are safeguards and strong internal controls that are not implemented in many business management firms.

Did all of the bank statements go to you?

Yes.

OK. It's not like your clients could have gotten the bank statements and said, “What's this $50,000 withdrawal about?” They never even had the source document to be able to question whether it is.

Correct, because literally everything, all financial, came through us. With the exception of asset management, we were not asset managers. We weren't interested in managing their portfolio. We were the quarterback along with their asset manager at meetings because we knew what their projected cash flow was gonna look like.

We could share that with the asset manager so he or she knew how to help the client meet short or long investment.

Would that also be a recommendation, to split out the roles to different people, different entities? In your case, you weren't the long-term asset manager, but I could see the situation where the business manager's also the asset manager?

Yes, we weren't for that reason. First of all, we're not experts in managing assets right hand that make sure that you retain experts in whatever you're looking for in the professional you're considering to hire. I was blessed to work with one of the best asset managers. I don't wanna say his name because of various reasons.

There are business managers that choose to invest their clients, suggest investments to clients on real estate and things like that that may be appropriate. It may not be appropriate. It depends how they present it. Is there going to be a real estate expert that's going to educate them on this investment? It shouldn't come from just the business manager.

There's a lot of things that I'm going to say that will rock the entertainment space and my intention isn't to disrupt it just to disrupt it because that would be driven by an ego. My interest in disrupting it is to help the celebrities today. Understand what they should look for so that they don't have another Jonathan Schwartz business manager, so that they learn from the things that I was able to do so that their business manager cannot do those things today. That's the reason why I'm putting it out there.

I mean, clearly because you had said that there are a number of your clients who did not want to be mentioned. Clearly there were other victims that didn't come forward and were not public about it. Do you suspect that there is a larger percentage of business managers that are doing this sort of thing and people are just choosing to be quiet about it on their own? “I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to feel the shame of having worked with someone who took advantage of me.”

The clients that I didn't name came forward in terms of working with the government. Also with my former partners. What was never disclosed is that the clients got paid back in full.

Got you.

But the reason why I'm sealing their names is because they asked for that as part of their willingness to come forward and to request the financial audit to see how much was embezzled. I do suspect, and it's only my suspicion, however, I believe that when I was incarcerated, there were less than a handful of business managers that were committing fraud.

I suspect there's a small percentage that are still doing that. Because I don't know that for sure, it's just based on my instincts and based on some of the people that I speak with within the entertainment community today. I don't speak to a lot of people within the community of the entertainment world today because I'm fairly blackballed, and I should be blackballed.

Not to be victim-blaming, but I shouldn't say not to be victim-blaming, but with the rise of some artists, with the short period of time which they come from nothing to having a whole lot of money, that doesn't give them a whole lot of practical experience to know, “These are the things that I should be doing. These are the things that I should be watching out for.”

Your high school graduate isn't gonna be thinking about it. “Let me get source documents to make sure that my business manager isn't swindling me and maybe someone who's had a 23-year career and is looking for a new business manager.” They know to ask those questions, and they know to ask for those source documents. It's kind of one of those.

I imagine that because this field is part of people that are particularly high paid and people come into this field particularly quickly at times. They're the chances to take advantage of them because of what they don't know is pretty high.

I think that there's a lot of the young people that have grown up without any financial literacy, whether it's athletes or otherwise, and I think that the mentality of some of the athletes that I represented was first and foremost, like you said, even if someone went really high in the draft NFL or Major League Baseball or NBA and they get a nice contract, that's guaranteed.

Most of them then use that money to thank their mother, buy her a house. I'm not saying you shouldn't thank your mother, but I'm just saying that don't spend all your money in this contract despite it being a handsome sum of money because you gotta factor in the tax component. You gotta factor in you're paying an agent. You're paying this person and that person.

Now you have a net amount of money available to you. Don't go out and bling bling and buy 30 homes and 30 cars and be a big shot. Because the truth is you're not guaranteed to get another contract in the NFL. What if you get injured? What if your skills diminish?

What I advise clients to do is treat their first contract and those dollars as their last dollars with no expectation that the next contract is coming. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

What I advise clients to do is treat their first contract and those dollars as their last dollars with no expectation that the next contract is coming. If you approach it conservatively like that and you spend your money and you go on to find a budget, the likelihood of you filing for bankruptcy or being one of those athletes that have no more money, and they're not eligible to get a contract because they just didn't perform well or they got injured. Don't be those people.

Your mother and your father and all these so-called friends that you have from childhood, stop paying for them to travel with you. Stop inviting them to clubs and paying for everything because every dollar accumulates fairly fast. They're spending money on their friends that aren't really their friends. They're hangar honor.

That's probably the hard thing to realize. “There are people who want to hang around me because of the money, not because they're really my friend.”

Yeah. When I had money, by the way, and I was going to casinos, and I was buying tables, and I was buying bottles, it's because I wanted people to like me. Because I was that insecure person I talked about. I get that mentality, but I was in a dark place.

Here I am sharing what I advise clients and I advise them to save their money and to budget for themselves. I don't care if you make $40,000 a year, $40 million a year, or $400 million a year. Everyone should have a budget and everyone should live within their means.

I don't care if you make $40,000 a year, $40 million a year, or $400 million a year. Everyone should have a budget and everyone should live within their means. -Jonathan Schwartz Share on X

That is really good advice. When is the book coming out?

Within 12 months now.

Nice. If people wanna find out about it, how can they find out about it when it comes out?

They could follow me on my professional Instagram, which is—I don't have a lot of followers, so I welcome anybody. It's @therealjonathanschwartz. From there, I will be letting everyone know about my book and other things that are happening in my life. You could also really more importantly than finding out or showing any interest in my book, I would love people who are struggling to go on there and send me a message that they need help. Those are the ones that I'm really interested in following me.

OK. We'll make sure to put those links in the show notes so that people can—rather than trying to figure out how to spell things and find things and get the wrong ones that they've got the right one.

Thank you.

Because we wanna make sure it's the—it’s not the official with three Fs or the official with one F.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I do appreciate the honesty. I know it can be challenging to kind of bear your soul to one person, let alone a bunch of faceless people that you can't necessarily see, so I really appreciate what it takes to share in that way.

Thank you. I put myself out there on purpose because, one, I'm not interested. I'm OK if people don't like me or they're judging me, and I'm OK if people like me either way. But I put myself out there because I really do hope that my story can inspire people to ask for help.

Awesome. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Thank you for having me so much.