Peter Kramer /AP Photo The Daily Beast has learned the identity of two of the anonymous A-listers described as among the defrauded in the criminal complaint of financial adviser Kenneth Starr. 
 
 Today’s criminal complaint against financial adviser-to-the-stars Kenneth Starr contains several anonymous clients who were allegedly defrauded by him and his firm. The identity of clients and victims alike has become an instant guessing game in New York and Hollywood. 
 
 As reporters scramble around the Manhattan courthouse trying to piece together this fast-moving story, sources familiar with Starr and his clients have filled in some of the blanks: “client number two” in the criminal complaint is an “actress" who marched into Starr’s offices on April 26 demanding to know where $1 million of her money had gone. Within a day, the money had been returned to her, but the feds allege that it was not her money being paid back to her. Rather, it was the money of “client number three”—a former talent agent executive and his wife.” 
 
 The actress is none other than Uma Thurman, according to several sources close to her. The talent agent is strongly believed to be Jim Wiatt, the former head of William Morris—and another client of Starr’s firm—according to other entertainment industry insiders, though the Daily Beast could not confirm this. 
 
 For months, "the actress" had been suspicious, the newly filed complaint against Starr said. She’d viewed financial statements that she found “confusing.” She’d shown them to a friend with “financial expertise” and the person noticed that that her assets had dropped significantly, but that “no one had notified her.” 
 
 • Peter Lauria: The Pole Dancer & the Ponzi Scheme 
 
 
 
 • Allan Dodds Frank: Madoff vs. Starr—Who’s the Real Ponzi King? According to the complaint, when the actress (i.e. Thurman) questioned Starr, he hemmed and hawed. Starr told her he couldn’t reach “associate 4,” the man who he said held the money. 
 
 “Starr was asked to contact Associate 4 to have the money returned. Starr returned to the room several times to say that Associate 4 was unreachable.” 
 
 Eventually, Thurman was taken to a private conference room, where she called Associate 4’s number. “She was put right through," the complaint says. “She informed Associate 4 that she had a problem because a large portion of her savings was in his account.” 
 
 “[Associate 4] replied that he did not know the money belonged to her and that he thought it belonged to Starr. He further said that he got really mad at Starr and told him ‘you bungled me up on this.' He promised to get the money back to her.” 
 
 Within hours, he did. 
 
 Except that, the money transferred came from client number 3, according to the complaint, a “former executive of a talent agency, and his wife.” 
 
 Such stories are likely to begin bubbling up, as the Hollywood community reels from the news that a mini-Madoff was allegedly in their midst. Rumors have been percolating throughout the entertainment industry for months that all was not right with Starr and his firm—the director Mike Nichols pulled out all his money. So had the photographer Annie Leibovitz, who was having money problems and was introduced to a lending firm called Art Capital, via Starr. When her relationship went south, amid critical reports about Art Capital, her relationship with Starr busted up as well. 
 
 On Thursday, Leibovitz said, "News of Ken Starr's arrest does not come as a complete surprise to me, and I will follow this story with great interest. Ken Starr no longer represents me and has not for some time." 
 
 Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post. 
 
 Get a head start with the Morning Scoop email. It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web. Get it. For more entertainment and fashion coverage follow Sexy Beast on Twitter. 
 
 For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. ||||| A general view of the building where Kenneth Starr resides in New York May 27, 2010. 
 
 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kenneth Starr, an investment adviser to celebrities and other wealthy New Yorkers, was coaxed from a darkened suit closet by U.S. agents at his apartment on Thursday to face charges of running a fraud of at least $30 million, prosecutors said. 
 
 Starr ran a complex set of schemes involving his son, his wife, prominent New York City Democratic Party politician Andrew Stein, "a former national official of a major political party," and "a partner at a prominent national law firm," an affidavit by an Internal Revenue Service agent said. 
 
 The criminal complaint charging Starr with wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering, alludes to a number of wealthy New Yorkers as his clients or associates -- "an actress," "an elderly heiress," a "retired prominent basketball player" and "a jeweler." 
 
 Starr, 66, was detained without bail by U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman, who agreed with prosecutors that there was a risk of flight. An earlier court document gave his age as 65. 
 
 A U.S. prosecutor, William Harrington, told the judge that when agents arrived at Starr's luxury apartment building early on Thursday morning to arrest him, Starr told the doorman: "tell them I'm not here, only my wife is here." 
 
 The court heard that an hour later, when agents said they would use a master key to open the door, Starr's wife let them in and whispered "he's upstairs." The agents found him in a dark closet, his shoes protruding from under suits. 
 
 The judge released co-defendant Stein, who was charged with lying to the IRS, on $250,000 bail after their joint appearance in Manhattan federal court. Starr's lawyer, Joshua Klein, said he would appeal the denial of bail. 
 
 None of the clients were identified in court documents, but a lawyer said one was 99-year-old heiress Rachel Mellon. 
 
 "She is shocked to hear of this alleged criminal activity of Ken Starr, whom she has known for many, many years and in whom she had the utmost trust and confidence," Mellon's lawyer, Alexander Forger, said in a statement. 
 
 Another client purportedly duped by Starr was jeweler Jacob Arabov, whose wife recorded many of her conversations with Starr when she became suspicious of him. 
 
 "It is now clear that they were defrauded," their lawyer, Ben Brafman, said in a statement. He said they "intend to pursue all legal remedies to recover their investments." 
 
 STAR CLIENT LIST 
 
 An April 2008 civil lawsuit against Starr alleged he stole millions from aging widow Joan Stanton, an actress who voiced Lois Lane in a 1940s radio show "The Adventures of Superman." Stanton has since died. 
 
 That lawsuit said Starr also managed money for film director Mike Nichols, writer Neil Simon, journalist Diane Sawyer, Broadway director Hal Prince and actor Wesley Snipes. 
 
 NBC News in New York reported that other clients include film director Martin Scorsese, Hollywood star Uma Thurman and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. 
 
 The court document refers to "an actress" identified as Client-2 who, accompanied by her lawyers, went to the office of Starr & Co on April 26 to ask him why $1 million was wired to one of his associates from her account without her knowledge. The money was eventually returned. 
 
 Starr's son was neither identified by name in the complaint nor charged with any crime. Lawyers for Starr's son and wife, Diane Passage, could not immediately be found. Passage was named in a civil complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It said Passage produces films and plays. 
 
 Stein, a former president of the New York City Council, owes more than $2 million in back taxes, the complaint said. His lawyer, Andy Maloney, said in court that Stein "has been talking, cooperating for the last six months as much as any defendant as I've ever seen." 
 
 Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a news conference that some of Starr's clients "were actually pawns in a Ponzi scheme" since January 2008 through last month. 
 
 A Ponzi scheme is one in which corrupt money managers use funds from some clients to pay other clients. The scheme collapses when they are eventually unable to meet redemptions. 
 
 Many such frauds have unraveled in the financial crisis, the most infamous of which was financier Bernard Madoff's decades-long multibillion-dollar fraud. Madoff, 72, is serving a 150-year prison sentence. 
 
 Authorities accused Starr of misappropriating millions of dollars of client money for his personal use, including the purchase in April of a new luxury Manhattan apartment worth $7.5 million. The SEC said it had five bedrooms, 6 1/2 bathrooms, a 32-foot granite lap pool and a 1,500-square-foot garden. 
 
 Stein was accused of failing to disclose the existence of Wind River LLC, a shell company established in 2008 by an unidentified lawyer. Starr stated that funds going to Wind River were loans to Stein for his work as a "placement agent" for investments, according to the affidavit. 
 
 Starr is not the same Ken Starr who led the investigation of former President Bill Clinton in the affair over White House intern Monica Lewinsky. 
 
 The cases are USA v Kenneth Starr and Andrew Stein, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and SEC v Starr et al No. 10-04270. 
 
 (Reporting by Grant McCool and Basil Katz; Editing by Maureen Bavdek, Phil Berlowitz) ||||| Shkreli, Drug Price Gouger, Denies Fraud and Posts Bail Arrested Thursday, accused of Ponzi-like scheme 
 
 Martin Shkreli, center, and attorney Evan Greebel exit the federal building in Manhattan where the FBI is located on Dec. 17, 2015. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg 
 
 Martin Shkreli, a boastful pharmaceutical executive who came under withering criticism for price gouging vital drugs, denied securities fraud charges on Thursday following an early morning arrest, and was freed on a $5 million bond. 
 
 While the 32-year-old has earned a rare level of infamy for his brazenness in business and his personal life, what he was charged with had nothing to do with skyrocketing drug prices. He is accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to them about it, illegally taking assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors in another. 
 
 “Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said at a press conference. 
 
 Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Shkreli at his Midtown Manhattan apartment at about 6:30 a.m. and forced him to walk through a gaggle of photographers outside FBI headquarters. 
 
 Evan Greebel, a New York lawyer, who is alleged in the federal indictment to have helped Shkreli in his schemes, was also arrested and charged. Like Shkreli, he pleaded not guilty, and he was freed on a $1 million bond. Both men and their lawyers declined to comment after their court appearance. 
 
 A spokeswoman for Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP where Greebel worked during the time in question, declined comment. A spokeswoman for Kaye Scholer where he works now, said the firm has launched an internal investigation. 
 
 Read the full text of the indictment here 
 
 In the federal indictment and a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission, authorities say Shkreli began losing money and lying to investors from the time he began managing money. In his mid-20s, he got nine investors to place $3 million with him and at one point he had only $331. 
 
 Securities fraud is hardly unheard of on Wall Street and the amounts involved here are nowhere near on the scale of Bernie Madoff. But Shkreli’s case has drawn such attention because of his defiant price-gouging and his own up-by-the-bootstraps history. 
 
 The son of immigrants from Albania and Croatia who did janitorial work and raised him and his brothers in working-class Brooklyn, Shkreli seemed at first to embody the American dream and then to mock it. After dropping out of an elite Manhattan high school, he worked as an intern for Jim Cramer’s hedge fund as a 17-year-old and quickly impressed with his ability to call stocks. He created hedge funds, taught himself biology and, after earning a BA at Baruch College in New York City, began hedge funds investing in biotech. 
 
 AIDS activists pour cat litter on an image of Shkreli in a makeshift cat litter pan during a protest highlighting pharmaceutical drug pricing, in front of the building that houses Turing's offices, in New York. Photographer: Craig Ruttle/AP Photo 
 
 He became famous within a certain world but entered public consciousness after he raised the price more than 55-fold for Daraprim in September from $13.50 per pill to $750. It is the preferred treatment for a parasitic condition known as toxoplasmosis, which can be deadly for unborn babies and patients with compromised immune systems including those with HIV or cancer. His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, bought the drug, moved it to a closed distribution system and instantly drove the price into the stratosphere. 
 
 He drew shocked rebukes from Congress, doctors and presidential candidates, and brought public attention to the rising prices of older drugs. Donald Trump called Shkreli a “spoiled brat,” and the BBC dubbed him the “most hated man in America.” Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate, rejected a $2,700 campaign donation from him, directing it to an HIV clinic. A spokesman said the campaign would not keep money “from this poster boy for drug company greed.” 
 
 All the criticism seemed at first to have some impact and Shkreli said he would lower the price. Then he reneged. When Hillary Clinton tried one more time last month to get him to cut the cost, he dismissed her with the tweet “lol.” At a Forbes summit in New York this month, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he said if he could have done it over, “I probably would have raised the price higher,” adding, “My investors expect me to maximize profits.” 
 
 “The $65 million Retrophin wants from me would not dent me. I feel great. I’m licking my chops over the suits I’m going to file against them” 
 
 Shkreli did further damage to his public image with other acts and boasts. He spent millions on the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album that music fans are desperate to hear and then told Bloomberg Businessweek that he had no immediate plans to listen to it. He takes often to Twitter and message boards, bragging about his business strategies, musical tastes and politics; he live-streams from his office for long stretches. 
 
 The SEC complaint and federal indictment lay out a series of schemes and cover-ups carried out by Shkreli. Capers said authorities began investigating him as early as 2014. 
 
 Barely 23, he was managing hedge fund Elea Capital in New York and lost it all in 2007. Around then, a trade with Lehman Brothers ended with a $2.3 million judgment against him, prosecutors said. In 2010, he lost his clients’ $3 million investment in his new fund, MSMB Capital. 
 
 In 2011, he bet that shares of Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. would fall and wound up owing $7 million to his broker, Merrill Lynch, authorities said. He couldn’t pay, and he, an unnamed accomplice and MSMB Capital eventually extinguished the debt with a $1.35 million settlement, they said. 
 
 Part of that money came from his next firm, authorities said. After the collapse of MSMB Capital, Shkreli launched MSMB Healthcare with about $5 million from 13 investors. He paid himself “far in excess” of the agreed-upon 1 percent management fee and 20 percent profit incentive, according to the SEC. 
 
 From Wall Street Wunderkind to “Most Hated Man in America" About 2000: Age 17, Shkreli interns for Jim Cramer, of “Mad Money," and correctly predicts biotech decline. Early 2000s: Sets up hedge funds, trash-talking companies he is shorting. About 2009: Founds MSMB Capital Management, which later suffers losses on a bad trade with Merrill Lynch. February 2011: Starts Retrophin, a biotech company. September 2014: Voted out as Retrophin's CEO, Shkreli tweets that the directors are “inane." February 2015: Launches new company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, which acquires an old drug and jacks up their prices. August 2015: Retrophin sues Shkreli for $65 million, saying he used company assets to pay off hedge fund investors. September 2015: Storm erupts over Turing's price increase—from $13.50 to $750 a pill—for anti-parasitic drug Daraprim. Sept. 21, 2015: Hillary Clinton tweets “Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow, I'll lay out a plan to take it on." October 2015: New York attorney general investigates the pricing and distribution of Daraprim. November 2015: A Shkreli-led group buys majority of KaloBios, presaging price increase in drug for Chagas disease. Nov. 5, 2015: To critics of his drug-pricing strategy, Shkreli tweets “lol." December 2015: News emerges that Shkreli bought the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan's latest album. Shkreli tweets: “Within 10 years, more than half of all rap/hip-hop music will be made exclusively for me. Don't worry—I will share some of it." 
 
 Shkreli then used cash from MSMB Healthcare to invest in Retrophin, the pharmaceutical company he founded in 2011, even though it “had no products or assets,” prosecutors said. Later, he used the assets of Retrophin to repay angry investors in his hedge funds, prosecutors said. 
 
 Shkreli is confident that he will be cleared of the charges, according to a statement on his behalf. 
 
 Shkreli is particularly disappointed that his litigation with Retrophin has become a government enforcement matter, according to the statement. He also denied the charges regarding the MSMB entities, which he said involve complex accounting matters that prosecutors and the SEC fail to understand, according to the statement. 
 
 “It is no coincidence that these charges, the result of investigations which have been languishing for considerable time, have been filed at the same time of Shkreli’s high-profile, controversial and yet unrelated activities,” according to the statement. “The government suggested that Mr. Shkreli was involved in a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi victims do not make money, yet Mr. Shkreli’s investors enjoyed strong results.” 
 
 As Shkreli’s losses mounted, so did his lies. He fabricated portfolio statements and, with his lawyer’s help, deceived the SEC and outside accountants. He backdated records, manufactured a phony loan agreement between Retrophin and a hedge fund, and created sham consulting agreements with Retrophin as a way to route the company’s cash to his earlier investors. 
 
 Greebel, the arrested lawyer, made sure Retrophin’s outside accountants were unaware of Shkreli’s financial maneuvers and helped him concoct the consulting agreements used to repay the hedge fund investors, the U.S. said. 
 
 The cases mirror a lawsuit brought by Retrophin. Shkreli blithely dismissed his old company’s claims, saying, “The $65 million Retrophin wants from me would not dent me. I feel great. I’m licking my chops over the suits I’m going to file against them.” 
 
 Earlier, he had denied wrongdoing in a post on InvestorsHub after Retrophin disclosed it had received a subpoena from federal prosecutors and the preliminary findings from its own investigation of Shkreli. He called the company’s allegations “completely false, untrue at best and defamatory at worst.” 
 
 “Every transaction I’ve ever made at Retrophin was done with outside counsel’s blessing,” he said on the investment blog in February, without identifying the lawyers. 
 
 When Shkreli was working for Cramer’s firm, he was still a teenager. After recommending successful trades, Shkreli eventually set up his own hedge fund, quickly developing a reputation for trashing biotechnology stocks in online chatrooms and shorting them, to enormous profit. 
 
 Widely admired for his intellect and sharp eye, he set up Retrophin to develop drugs and acquire older pharmaceuticals that could be sold for higher profits. 
 
 Turing, which is less than a year old and has raised $90 million in financing, has followed a similar strategy with the purchase of drugs, including Daraprim. 
 
 Shkreli recently bought a majority stake in KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. after Turing received a warning from the New York attorney general that the distribution network for Daraprim may violate antitrust laws. State officials made their concerns known to Turing and Shkreli in an Oct. 12 letter obtained by Bloomberg. 
 
 KaloBios recently acquired the license for benznidazole, a standard treatment for Chagas, a deadly parasitic infection most common in South and Central America. The firm announced plans to increase the cost from a couple hundred dollars for two months to a pricing structure like that for hepatitis-C drugs, which can run to nearly $100,000 for 12 weeks. 
 
 “Some of these companies seem to act more like hedge funds than traditional pharmaceutical companies” 
 
 With the federal charges and regulatory actions, Shkreli could be banned from running a public company, which could put the future of KaloBios into question. Trading in KaloBios shares was halted after the stock fell 53 percent. It’s less clear what the impact could be on Turing, which is closely held. 
 
 Federal authorities will have to ask a judge to impose an asset freeze if they want to guarantee Shkreli doesn’t dispose of ill-gotten gains. 
 
 The charges suggest that a small group of health-care firms—ones that acquire the rights to drugs and significantly increase their prices—is drawing the scrutiny of regulators and prosecutors, with a possible chilling effect on aggressive drug-pricing strategies. 
 
 Legislators are already paying attention. A hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging on Dec. 9 scrutinized such tactics. 
 
 Before Shkreli started Turing, Retrophin raised the price of Thiola, used to treat a rare condition causing debilitating recurrences of kidney stones, from $1.50 a pill to $30. 
 
 “Some of these companies seem to act more like hedge funds than traditional pharmaceutical companies,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who ran the recent hearing. 
 
 George Scangos, CEO of biotechnology giant Biogen Inc., went further, saying in an interview, “Turing is to a research-based company like a loan shark is to a legitimate bank.” 
 
 (Updated with Shkreli statement.)
– A money manager who catered to high-profile celebrities and wealthy New Yorkers has been charged with running a $30 million Ponzi scheme. The client list of Kenneth Starr (no, not that Kenneth Starr) includes Uma Thurman and Martin Scorsese, reports Reuters. No details on exactly who lost what, but Starr made enough to afford a $7.5 million Manhattan apartment. The indictment doesn't name names of possible victims, but it recounts "an actress" storming into Starr's office to demand to know where $1 million of her money went. Jacob Bernstein of the Daily Beast identifies her as Thurman. She reportedly did get her money back, though it came not from Starr but, in classic Ponzi fashion, another client. That unlucky guy was Jim Wiatt, the former head of William Morris, writes Bernstein.