Formerly red-hot producer Scott Storch, known for his signature aviator shades, high living and banging beats, is facing some hard financial times.
According to the Miami Herald, after the beatmaster failed to show up for a child-support hearing regarding his 2-year-old son Jalen last week, a judge issued a pickup order that authorized cops to jail Storch, 34, until he appears in court. On top of those troubles, the flashy producer — behind hits by Paris Hilton, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Lil Wayne — is reportedly behind on property-tax payments on his $10 million Miami mansion and has not made support payments on one of his other kids in five months.
Storch's lawyer, Guy Spiegelman, said the financial snafus will be rectified soon and are the result of misconduct by the producer's former managers. Spiegelman told MTV News that he didn't know why Storch didn't make it to the court date — speculating that "he must have been out of town on work" — but said the support issue will be resolved shortly. "He doesn't deny paternity, but it's an issue of collection of money," the attorney said.
The missed child-support hearing was intended to explain why Storch is behind on at least $46,000 in child support, which includes $16,000 toward Jalen's Florida Prepaid College Plan. Dalene Jennifer Daniel, Jalen's mother, sued Storch for paternity in 2006 and has claimed that he has not lived up to the settlement agreement. And she's not the only one after the "Lean Back" producer for child support. Vanessa Bellido, 33, mother of 16-year-old Steven Bellido, has filed a paternity suit against the producer, who has acknowledged that Steven is his son.
The Herald reported that Storch had acknowledged previously that he is the boy's father and had been sending support payments until January but has since ceased. Bellido said without the money, she and her son are having a hard time.
"While [Storch] drives around in his Ferrari and Cadillac, [Steven] is sleeping on a couch in the same room with his mother," Bellido claimed, according to her emergency petition for child support. "The situation is dire." A car that Storch provided for the teen has reportedly been repossessed, and court documents show that Bellido claims Storch is $5,000 behind in promised tuition payments, which has put the boy's junior year of school "in jeopardy."
"It's coincidental," Spiegelman said of the dual support claims. "He stopped paying in the early portion of this year because he had mismanagement of his funds and had a big shortfall, which will be corrected soon." Spiegelman did not say who was handling Storch's affairs before, but he said the producer has been "more than generous" with both women, paying each around $7,500 a month.
Spiegelman said Storch has put together a new management team and that the financial issues will be resolved soon.
The money troubles don't stop there, though. The paper also reported that Storch is way behind on property taxes on his $10 million mansion. According to records, Storch owes more than a half-million dollars in property taxes from the past two years, a deficit Spiegelman said would also be settled soon. "The numbers are staggering because the taxes are awfully high on the property," he said, adding that he also expects to have the arrest warrant quashed within the week.
In February, LA Confidential Records owner David Menefield won a $500,000 judgment against Storch over claims that he loaned the producer $100,000 in 2003 to save the house from foreclosure and never received the four music tracks Storch had promised to Menefield's artists.
The financial crunch is especially surprising given that in 2006, Rolling Stone estimated Storch's fortune at around $70 million, but Spiegelman said "the numbers out there are not always accurate." He said the producer has a high income and the amounts he owes are above average, "but when you make that kind of money, when things go bad, they're not minor, they're catastrophic."
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