Tobey Maguire Returns Dirty Money

Thu., Sep. 25, 2003 2:30 PM PDT by Lia Haberman

Tobey Maguire is hoping about $200,000 will make his money problems go away.

The Seabiscuit star has written out the whopping check to return some fishy funds given to him by his former investment adviser, Dana Giacchetto.

According to the Smoking Gun Website, Maguire is the latest celeb to settle a "fraudulent conveyance" lawsuit filed by a court-appointed trustee overseeing the financial shambles of the Cassandra Group, an investment firm formerly headed by the disgraced money man.

In August 2000, Giacchetto pleaded guilty to bilking millions from his lesser-known clients and diverting those funds to his A-listers, including Maguire, Cameron Diaz and Alanis Morisette.

Giacchetto also admitted to skimming the till from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, who had been friends with the money man, to finance his high-on-the-hog lifestyle. The Los Angeles Times estimated that DiCaprio had invested more than $1 million and probably lost about 20 percent of his money.

Meanwhile, the celebs who profited innocently assumed that the money represented investment returns, and not ill-gotten funds. Since then, they've been forced to return their investment "profits," which have then been divided between Giacchetto's numerous creditors. Diaz paid back $100,000. Tim Roth paid back $6,000. Morisette paid back $1,800.

In Maguire's settlement agreement, filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, the actor claims he paid out $197,500 to "avoid the expense and delay of further litigation." Here's hoping the $17 million he received to reprise his role as the web-slinging savior in director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 will soften the blow (or at least be better invested).

Former clients who have yet to reach an agreement with the bankruptcy trustee include Courteney Cox, Ben Stiller and Steven Van Zandt, according the the New York Post.

For his swindling, Giacchetto was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison--the maximum sentence the judge could impose under the law. He served three years in a federal lockup in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, before being transferred to a Bronx halfway house in February and ultimately released at the end of July.