Selena Gomez, the actress, singer and beauty mogul, has been accused of defrauding investors in her mental health start-up, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday.
Ms. Gomez co-founded Wondermind, a mental health and wellness platform, with her mother, Mandy Teefey, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit, in 2021, to make mental health content more accessible. But investors say the founders “falsely represented” the infrastructure, leadership and resources of the start-up, according to the lawsuit filed in Delaware.
Investors, represented by two separate limited liability companies, said Ms. Gomez and her mother had directly solicited nearly $1.2 million from them. They purchased $425,000 of preferred stock in May 2022 and $750,000 in June 2022.
The plaintiffs said they had been told that Ms. Gomez would be “actively building the company as its head of marketing,” that she signed a contract “obligating her to perform and then ignored it.” Promised partnerships with J.P. Morgan and Fidelity, in which Wondermind would provide mental health and wellness services to their employees, “did not exist”; advertising deals, celebrity cover stories and a “groundbreaking app” never materialized, the lawsuit says.
While Wondermind “quietly collapsed around them, not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors,” the lawsuit says.
The investors said they instead learned about the “utter financial and operational disarray at Wondermind” from a story in The Cut published in September 2025. The story included allegations of substance abuse among leadership; Ms. Gomez’s efforts to distance herself from the company; the ouster of its chief executive, Daniella Pierson; and failure to pay its employees or vendors. Ms. Gomez has long been open about her mental health struggles.
Wondermind began as a website, with plans to create a “mental fitness ecosystem,” including an editorial publication, a mobile app and a podcast, with Ms. Gomez to “remain intimately involved,” the lawsuit said.
But Ms. Gomez, Ms. Teefey and Ms. Pierson, who is also named in the lawsuit, concealed issues and defrauded the investors by claiming that Wondermind “was performing well and poised for success,” the lawsuit said.
Ms. Pierson said in a statement that she “categorically denies the allegations against her and welcomes the opportunity to present concrete documentation and financial records that establish the facts.” She denied using investor funds for personal expenses.
Representatives for Ms. Gomez and Ms. Teefey did not return a request for comment.
During its first round of funding, Wondermind’s leaders told potential investors that it had an initial valuation of $95 million, and was seeking a $5 million investment. Ms. Gomez, Ms. Teefey and Ms. Pierson collectively controlled about 90 percent of Wondermind’s shares, the lawsuit said. Ms. Pierson told investors that Wondermind could have a potential value of over $4 billion, in large part because of Ms. Gomez’s involvement and celebrity.
Wondermind marketed Ms. Pierson, the founder of The Newsette, an online media company, as “a rising star,” according to the lawsuit. Ms. Pierson left Wondermind in 2023, which the plaintiffs believed at the time was “a voluntary departure,” according to the lawsuit.
But last August, Forbes published a story that included claims about Ms. Pierson exaggerating her experience and success with The Newsette. When the plaintiffs contacted Ms. Teefey for an explanation, she told them that Ms. Pierson had misappropriated investor funds, including their own, “to fund her lavish lifestyle,” the lawsuit said, including to pay for a $60,000-a-month apartment in New York City.
After The Cut published its article the next month, the investors sent Ms. Gomez, Ms. Teefey and Ms. Pierson a notice of rescission and demanded a return of their investment funds. Ms. Teefey “never substantively responded to the notice,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit says that Ms. Teefey contacted Andrew Resnick, one of the investors, and suggested that he and the other plaintiffs should hold off on any lawsuit because Wondermind was setting up an escrow account to facilitate the return of their investment.
Ms. Teefey then “disappeared,” according to the lawsuit. The “bizarre interaction reinforces the lengths to which the defendants have gone — and will continue to go — to conceal their fraud, lull the plaintiffs, and evade accountability,” it said.
In April, Ms. Teefey told the investors in an email that she “thought we had returned your investment,” according to the lawsuit, when Wondermind “had returned nothing.”
The plaintiffs are seeking a full jury trial.
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