Actress Anne Hathaway plopped down $37,000 a month for her then-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri’s apartment in Olympic Towers in NY for the last four months of his lease before the Feds closed in and arrested him on fraud and money laundering charges. You would think the guy would have some money left to his name after bilking investors in an elaborate scheme for around $50 million. He paid a $1.3 million settlement to billionaire Ron Burkle in April, but he must have been broke for a couple months before that. If Hathaway was paying his rent for four months until June that means all his ill-gotten gains had pretty much run out by the time he had to pay that settlement – or maybe he was just scamming her, too.

Vanity Fair has more details on this sordid story of the actress and the con man.

The “Get Smart” actress paid her beleaguered beau’s whopping $37,000 monthly rent at his sumptuous Olympic Tower duplex for four months until finally, in June, his lease ran out – and she ditched him as the feds closed in on his schemes, a titillating new Vanity Fair report says.

“It was totally love at first sight . . . He is sooo good-looking . . . He looks like a god,” the young actress once cooed after the pair met in spring 2004, the article says.

But by this summer, their passionate, fiery relationship was over – and badly.

A humiliated Follieri dissolved into tears the night of June 23 while staying in a spare bed at his parents’ place at Trump Tower – as his “baby,” Hathaway, dumped him over the phone, Vanity Fair says.
Follieri, dressed in his nightly pajama uniform of “dark blue or black Ralph Lauren polo shirt and white shorts,” kept his good-luck charm nearby – “a large, green, plastic frog, about 9 inches high and wide” – as he took the distressing call.

Hathaway, 25, tried to let him off gently.

“You were the love of my life,” she told him, according to the mag. “I’ll always love you. You know that, baby.”

Six hours later, the feds busted in and hauled off the 29-year-old Follieri in handcuffs on charges of money laundering and wire fraud.

It was later rumored that Hathaway had a hand in the bust, having allegedly lured Follieri back to his adopted home of New York from Italy to face the raps.

[From The NY Post via TMZ]

There are plenty of other government and church officials involved too. Follieri’s scheme is being called “Vati-Con,” and he claimed to investors to have been the CFO for the Vatican and to be able to offer Catholic properties in the US at rock bottom prices. In reality he was just putting in bids with everyone else and bribing Vatican employees and church officials to help him pull off the scam. Follieri faces life in prison if he’s convicted on all the counts of fraud and money laundering he’s charged with.

Hathaway knew her boyfriend was facing lawsuits for months and now that the news is out that she was paying his rent for so long you have to wonder why she stayed with him. Maybe she knew the fantasy was cracking but wasn’t quite ready to face reality yet. Somehow she escaped with her reputation intact and she’s still the sweet naive actress. She must have known something was going on and it looks like she got out at the last minute to save herself before it was too late.

Here’s Hathaway at the Venice Film Festival this morning at the premiere of Rachel Getting Married. Credit : Apega/WENN