STAR Jones is being dissed in Detroit for not showing up at a 2006 Super Bowl weekend charity event - but the woman making the claim is a financial train wreck who never coughed up the dough to pay for the celebrity gig.
Bankrupt Motown businesswoman Sharon DuMas-Pugh, director of a nonprofit called Full & Fabulous, told Detroit TV station WXYZ this week that Jones promised to give an “empowerment” talk to overweight girls but blew it off. Instead, she claims, Jones used charity-supplied plane tickets to “come to town for book signings and a fashion show with Holly Robinson Peete - on our dime.”
But according to the event contract obtained by Page Six, DuMas-Pugh agreed back in April 2005 to pay Jones’ standard $25,000 speaking fee and pay for first-class airline tickets and a five-star hotel room. A $10,000 deposit was due that August. Just weeks before the Super Bowl, DuMas-Pugh still hadn’t come up with any money - and Jones agreed to extend the deadline.
“This was something I was really looking forward to doing, so I gave them as much time as I could, because I thought they were making an effort. But they clearly had breached the contract,” Jones told The Post’s Jeane MacIntosh.
DuMas-Pugh, who started her group 25 years ago, isn’t exactly a financial whiz. IRS records show that her charity, which solicits donations via its Web site, has never filed a tax return, though it’s required to by law.
And after running up $74,000 in debt, DuMas-Pugh declared personal bankruptcy in 2005. In the filing, she claimed to be “unemployed,” making just $3,500 a year as a “casual” consultant. Her charity co-director also has filed for personal bankruptcy.
In late January 2006, DuMas-Pugh, who was charging $100 a head for Jones’ keynote luncheon speech, finally came through with the deposit. Jones then gave the group until the day before the event to get the rest and boarded the plane for Detroit. But the money never materialized.
“So,” says Jones, “I did not show up. That part is the truth.”
Now DuMas-Pugh says she’s going after Jones for $20,000, and Jones says she’s hurt by what she calls an attempted “shakedown,” adding, “I am devastated that these young women were misled, [but] they were misled not by me but by their own director.”
(Via pagesix)
