Alanis Morissette’s ex-business manager was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement.
Jonathan Todd Schwartz, formerly of GSO Business Management, accepted a plea deal and confessed to stealing his clients’ money and covering it up through “falsified account records,” Deadline reports:
Schwartz was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee, who described his crimes as “insidious” and “audacious,” adding that they had resulted in “grave economic and psychological harm” to his victims, whose lives were “upended by the financial turmoil he caused.”
Besides the money he embezzled from Morissette, Schwartz also embezzled more than $1 million from another, unnamed, client and concealed the theft by falsely coding the unauthorized cash withdrawals as money used for the client’s home renovations. He also admitted that that he embezzled $737,500 from yet another unnamed client and forged that client’s signature on at least two cash receipts.
A judge also ordered Schwartz to pay a total of $8.7 million in restitution.
In a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter published in April, Schwartz formally apologized for his actions and blamed his gambling addiction. “I let everybody down, and for that I will spend the rest of my life asking for forgiveness and making amends to everyone I have hurt,” he wrote.
Morissette responded to the apology, stating, “I would be apprehensive to believe any words that come out of Jonathan Schwartz’s mouth.”
