Thieves hit ‘The Money Queen' influencer's Bel-Air home, wind up with fake cash
An influencer known as 'The Money Queen' declared that 'karma won' after burglars broke into her Bel-Air home and made off with piles of fake cash used for a photo shoot.
The Los Angeles Police Department responded to a call about a burglary in process at a home shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, according to a department spokesperson. By the time officers arrived, the suspects were gone.
The home belongs to financial influencer Amanda Frances, an author and creator of online courses who says her aim is to help women acquire wealth.
'The burglars ransacked my closet, damaging my home in the process, but they dropped nearly everything, prioritizing the prop money when confronted by a neighbor's security guard,' said Frances in a statement shared with The Times.
The thieves abandoned several designer bags in the streets, which the police were then able to recover, she said. In their rush to flee the scene, they left some of the fake money scattered in the streets. She believes they also made away with a handful of purses, a ring and a necklace but dropped most of the items of major value.
The fake money was used in a recent photo shoot to promote Frances' 'Money Mentality Makeover' digital course. In the past, Frances has withdrawn and returned real money from the bank for photo shoots, but she opted for prop money this time after her photographer suggested it would be safer, she said.
Although Frances is relieved the stolen money was fake, she remains rattled by the experience.
'I've worked incredibly hard my entire life to build what I have and own my home in Bel-Air,' she stated. 'I am disheartened and distraught that the city I have dreamed of living in — since I was a child being raised in a tiny town in Oklahoma — has turned out to be an unsafe place to raise a family.'
Frances founded an online education and coaching company specializing in financial empowerment courses for women in 2011. The influencer now has more than half a million followers on Instagram, where she bills herself as a 'self made multimillionaire' and a 'repetitive unrealistic goal achiever.'
In an Instagram message shared with The Times, Frances noted that she bought the home from Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky, who raised their four children at the property. Richards is Paris Hilton's aunt and best known for her long-running role on 'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,' while Umansky is a real estate broker known for his own reality show, 'Buying Beverly Hills.'
'They raised their four kids here, I have four kids,' she told The Times. 'This is a family home and we no longer feel safe.'
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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
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One of the most potentially embarrassing incidents occurred during the 'No Kings' rally Saturday, when LAPD officers could be heard on a public radio channel saying they were taking friendly fire from L.A. County sheriff's deputies shooting less-lethal rounds. Three LAPD sources not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the incident occurred. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department said in a statement that the agency 'has not received reports of any 'friendly fire' incidents.' Some protesters allege LAPD officers deliberately targeted individuals who posed no threat. Shakeer Rahman, a civil rights attorney and community organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, said he was monitoring a demonstration snaking past LAPD headquarters on June 8 when he witnessed two colleagues who were demanding to know an officer's badge number get shot with a 40mm less-lethal launcher at close range. In a recording he shared of the incident, Rahman can be heard confronting the officer, who threatens to fire as he paces back and forth on an elevated platform. 'I'm gonna pop you right now, because you're taking away my focus,' the officer is heard saying before raising his weapon over the glass partition that separated them and firing two foam rounds at Rahman, nearly striking him in his groin. 'It's an officer who doesn't want to be questioned and knows he can get away with firing these shots,' said Rahman, who noted a 2021 court injunction bans the use of 40mm launchers in most crowd-control situations. Later on June 8, as clashes between officers and protesters intensified in other parts of downtown, department leaders authorized the use of tear gas against a crowd — a common practice among other agencies, but one that the LAPD hasn't used in decades. 'There was a need under these circumstances to deploy it when officers started taking being assaulted by commercial fireworks, some of those with shrapnel in them,' McDonnell said to The Times. 'It's a different day, and we use the tools we are able to access.' City and state leaders arguing against Trump's deployment of soldiers to L.A. have made the case that the LAPD is better positioned to handle demonstrations than federal forces. They say local cops train regularly on tactics beneficial to crowd control, including de-escalation, and know the downtown terrain where most demonstrations occur. But numerous protesters who spoke with The Times said they felt the LAPD officers were quicker to use violence than they have been at any point in recent years. Raphael Mamoun, 36, followed the June 8 march from City Hall to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street. Mamoun, who works in digital security, said his group eventually merged with other demonstrators and wound up bottlenecked by LAPD near the intersection of Temple and Alameda, where a stalemate with LAPD officers ensued. After roughly an hour, he said, chaos erupted without warning. 'I don't know if they made any announcement, any dispersal order, but basically you had like a line of mounted police coming behind the line of cops that were on foot and then they just started charging, moving forward super fast, pushing people, screaming at people, shooting rubber bullets,' he said. Mamoun's complaints echoed those of other demonstrators and observations of Times reporters at multiple protest scenes throughout the week. LAPD dispersal orders were sometimes only audible when delivered from an overhead helicopter. Toward the end of Saturday's hours-long 'No Kings' protests, many demonstrators contended officers used force against crowds that had been relatively peaceful all day. The LAPD's use of horses has also raised widespread concern, with some protesters saying the department's mounted unit caused injuries and confusion rather than bringing anything resembling order. One video captured on June 8 by independent journalist Tina-Desiree Berg shows a line of officers on horseback advance into a crowd while other officers fire less-lethal rounds at protesters shielding themselves with chairs and road signs. A protester can be seen falling to the ground, seemingly injured. The mounted units continue marching forward even as the person desperately tries to roll out of the way. Several horses trample over the person's prone body before officers arrest them. At other scenes, mounted officers were weaving through traffic and running up alongside vehicles that were not involved with the demonstrations. In one incident on June 10, a Times reporter saw a mounted officer smashing the roof of a car repeatedly with a wooden stick. 'It just seems like they are doing whatever the hell they want to get protesters, and injure protesters,' Mamoun said. Audrey Knox, 32, a screenwriter and teacher, was also marching with the City Hall group on June 8. She stopped to watch a tense skirmish near the Grand Park Metro stop when officers began firing projectiles into the crowd. Some protesters said officers fired less-lethal rounds into groups of people in response to being hit with flying objects. Although she said she was well off to the side, she was still struck in the head by one of the hard-foam rounds. Other demonstrators helped her get to a hospital, where Knox said she received five staples to close her head wound. In a follow-up later in the week, a doctor said she had post-concussion symptoms. The incident has made her hesitant to demonstrate again, despite her utter disgust for the Trump administration's actions in Los Angeles. 'It just doesn't seem smart to go back out because even when you think you're in a low-risk situation, that apparently is not the case,' she said. 'I feel like my freedom of speech was directly attacked, intentionally.' Times staff writers Julia Wick, Connor Sheets and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
