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Uh oh, Spaghetti O’s!
Dane Cook’s brother stole $12 million from the comedian and hid bricks of cash inside pasta sauce, a new documentary reveals.
Premiering on Sept. 29, “Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story” delves into
the financial drama that absorbed the blockbuster comedian in 2008, when his half-brother and business manager, Darryl McCauley, was charged with embezzling at least $12 million from Cook.
McCauley pleaded guilty to larceny, embezzlement and other charges (along with his wife, Erika) and was ordered to pay back the $12 million. He served a six-year prison sentence and then disappeared entirely. “Where is he? What has he done? How does this end?” Cook narrates in the documentary trailer.
In “Funny Money,” Cook says growing up, he and McCauley both wanted to be stand-up comedians. McCauley ultimately became a corrections officer, while Cook went on to become one of the most commercially successful comics of the 2000s. Cook describes McCauley in the documentary as “a person who spent so much time pretending to be something he wasn’t.”
Working as the handler of his finances, McCauley began withdrawing sums of $20,000, $50,000 and even $100,000 from Cook’s accounts without him noticing. “I was starting to feel something that I couldn’t really identify,” Cook admits in the trailer. “Was he hiding it in different places, stockpiling this money?”
Finally, it was revealed that McCauley had stolen a massive amount of money from his famous brother, hiding piles of cash in a safe and even wrapping it in plastic before stashing it inside pasta sauce containers — a storyline straight out of “The Bear.”
While an investigation determined that McCauley had embezzled at least $12 million, Cook believes the amount could be even higher. “I do believe that there’s money out there,” he says in the trailer. “I believe there’s people that know more.”
“Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story” will be available to stream on demand beginning Sept. 29.
