Music

The Shady Firm Behind Britney Spears and Diddy’s Legal Woes

DID IT AGAIN?

The secretive celeb management company scrutinized for its role in establishing Britney Spears’ conservatorship has found itself at the center of another legal saga.

Diddy and Britney
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group has been named once again in a web of damning celebrity accusations.

On the heels of its alleged involvement in Britney Spears’ conservatorship, at least one company representative has also been accused of helping Sean “Diddy” Combs run what authorities have called his “criminal enterprise.”

The company was first linked to Diddy’s accusations in producer Lil Rod’s lawsuit against Combs earlier this year, which claimed Tri Star “accountant” Robin Greenhill “would ensure the wiring, funds transfer, or cash payments to sex workers” for Diddy. Combs’ lawyers called the accusations of “constant” sexual harassment in the suit “pure fiction,” but then, of course, former mogul was indicted for racketeering, sex trafficking by force and transportation to engage in prostitution by authorities this month.

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Neither Greenhill or Tri Star were indicated in Diddy’s criminal charges, but both names would be familiar to anyone who followed Spears’ conservatorship case. Spears accused the company and its founder, her former manager Lou Taylor, of helping to create—and benefiting from—the conservatorship agreement put in place by her father Jamie Spears in 2008, which she described as “abusive” and “traumatizing” in her court statements. Spears claimed that Tri Star had received $18 million in the conservatorship arrangement, even as Spears didn’t have access to her own earnings.

The New York Times reported that Greenhill had been an important agent in the company’s interest in the conservatorship by controlling her credit cards and medications—well beyond what one would expect a pop star’s management company to do. A lot of the company’s inner workings for how it manages its accounts are kept under lock and key, the paper reported, with two former employees saying they weren’t allowed to access basic information like income statements or balance sheets.

Tri Star first tried to deny it helped originate Spears’ conservatorship, which Spears’ attorney challenged by presenting the court with emails that showed its reps discussing the arrangement at its origination. The New York Times documentary about Spears’ case included allegations that Tri Star, and Greenhill specifically, had operated an elaborate surveillance apparatus to spy on the pop star. In 2022, Greenhill obtained her own lawyer to address those allegations.

Now, as Combs waits behind bars to plead his case, Greenhill stands accused of wrongdoing once again.