Scrooge

I count other people’s money so you don’t have to. Fortunes built, fortunes burned, and the one move that decided it. Daily.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

She says she started giving lap dances the month she turned 18. Bikini cafés in Orange County first, then a year at a strip club called The Library. Her own mom told her it messed up "money, sex, love, drugs, everything."

Then she said "shut up fat ass" into a friend's phone, and she hasn't had to dance since.

In the video below, she walks Adam22 through it like a normal résumé.

She's one half of the Buzzball Girls. Two Latina friends from SoCal who film skits holding those little round cocktails and yelling at a guy named Carlos.

Carlos isn't real. They picked the name because it sounded like every Carlos they grew up with.

The first clip that blew up wasn't even planned. A friend was filming random skits. It was the end of the day, she wanted to go home, and she just said it.

"Yeah, shut up fat ass."

Their biggest one is sitting at about 3 million views. The whole thing took 3 weeks.

Before that, she was at the cafés where the girls serve food in bikinis. She says you could get lap dances there too. Then the strip club.

When she says the name, Adam stops her.

"Wait. I do know The Library. That's actually the strip club I used to go to when I lived in Long Beach."

He asks if her soul was vanishing, giving lap dances to 50-year-old truck drivers.

"I was so lost and sad."

She thanks her friend for pulling her into social media. "I don't have to dance now. I don't have to touch guys all day."

She says starting at 18 shifted her whole mindset. Before, she knew she'd get "all this money just by hanging out" with a rich guy. Now she says she needs a connection.

The money still comes from men. It just comes through a screen now. The reels go viral, the views go to their OnlyFans.

Even they know it has a clock on it. "It's working right now, but we have to think of new ideas pretty soon, 'cause it doesn't live forever."

Instagram already deleted one of their accounts at 100K followers. They started over.

From lap dances for truck drivers to 3 million views yelling at a man who doesn't exist. Same customers, better hours.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Angela White says she started in porn in 2003, when she was 18 and still in high school, and for eight years only shot scenes with women. Then she finished her university degree, did her first scene with a man in 2011 and almost straight away opened her own production company.

Most people think the story starts with the scenes. It starts with the business.

In the video below, she lays out her whole career in under a minute. Calm, like a CEO reading a timeline.

"I started in the industry in 2003, and I actually started doing girl-girl only."

She'd just turned 18. Eight years of girl-girl only. In an industry where the money is in hardcore, she said no for almost a decade.

Why? She says she simply wasn't ready. And she had a rule.

If the answer isn't "f*ck yes," she doesn't do it.

So she waited. She studied. She got her degree.

"It wasn't until after I finished my degree… that I started thinking about boy-girl."

2011. First scene with a man. She was 26.

And here's the part most people miss. She didn't go looking for a studio to sign her. "Very soon after that, I started my own production company."

She was shooting for herself before she was shooting for anyone else.

2016. She moves to the US and signs with Mark Spiegler, the most powerful agent in the industry.

And she still doesn't hand the business to someone else.

"I also run my own business. I'm editing scenes and organizing shoots… I work every single day."

Her own website. Her own scenes. A DVD distribution deal. And when this interview was filmed, she'd only been on OnlyFans for two months. It was "never really on my radar."

18 and in high school. Eight years of waiting. A degree. Then a company.

The biggest name in porn built it like a business first.

Would you have waited eight years?

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

At 18, Elsa Jean was stripping until 3 a.m. and showing up to class at 6 a.m. Ten-hour shifts. A few hundred dollars a night. She was training to be a surgical assistant.

That's the version of her story that sounds like a struggle. It wasn't.

Because in the same interview she says she was making around $200,000 a year before porn. The stripping didn't pay that. A married millionaire did.

"My OG sugar daddy… he has probably given me millions. I'm not joking."

A $10,000-a-month penthouse on Central Park. "Paid for my whole entire life." From 18.

So here's what doesn't add up. She had the money. She had the apartment. She didn't need to do anything.

And she walked into porn anyway.

$1,000 to $1,500 a scene. About 200 scenes in her first year. "I shot almost every day."

$150,000 for that whole year. Less than she was already getting for free.

In the video below, she explains it on her own podcast like it's nothing. Her co-host's face says everything.

So what did she do for the millionaire? Her co-host asks exactly that.

"No, I loved him."

That's the part that flips the story. The money was never the problem. He was.

"Why can't he be with you?"

"Because he's married."

A pause.

"And he's horrible."

She stayed on his money for years. Then one day she cut it off. She remembers the exact date. January 7th.

"I cut it off just because I want to carry myself."

7 years in the industry. Around 800 scenes. A Harper's Bazaar cover under her real name.

She could have lived on someone else's millions forever. She chose 800 scenes and her own name instead.

Would you have walked away?

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@JJeepJeo that's a lot of life packed into 3 years. which one do you think changed everything the most?

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

She says she started giving lap dances the month she turned 18. Bikini cafés in Orange County first, then a year at a strip club called The Library. Her own mom told her it messed up "money, sex, love, drugs, everything."

Then she said "shut up fat ass" into a friend's phone, and she hasn't had to dance since.

In the video below, she walks Adam22 through it like a normal résumé.

She's one half of the Buzzball Girls. Two Latina friends from SoCal who film skits holding those little round cocktails and yelling at a guy named Carlos.

Carlos isn't real. They picked the name because it sounded like every Carlos they grew up with.

The first clip that blew up wasn't even planned. A friend was filming random skits. It was the end of the day, she wanted to go home, and she just said it.

"Yeah, shut up fat ass."

Their biggest one is sitting at about 3 million views. The whole thing took 3 weeks.

Before that, she was at the cafés where the girls serve food in bikinis. She says you could get lap dances there too. Then the strip club.

When she says the name, Adam stops her.

"Wait. I do know The Library. That's actually the strip club I used to go to when I lived in Long Beach."

He asks if her soul was vanishing, giving lap dances to 50-year-old truck drivers.

"I was so lost and sad."

She thanks her friend for pulling her into social media. "I don't have to dance now. I don't have to touch guys all day."

She says starting at 18 shifted her whole mindset. Before, she knew she'd get "all this money just by hanging out" with a rich guy. Now she says she needs a connection.

The money still comes from men. It just comes through a screen now. The reels go viral, the views go to their OnlyFans.

Even they know it has a clock on it. "It's working right now, but we have to think of new ideas pretty soon, 'cause it doesn't live forever."

Instagram already deleted one of their accounts at 100K followers. They started over.

From lap dances for truck drivers to 3 million views yelling at a man who doesn't exist. Same customers, better hours.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Angela White says she shot her first porn scene at 18, while she was still in high school. She flew to Miami, filmed it, flew home and went back to class. Then the magazines started coming out before she'd even finished year 12.

She'd decided at 14. She waited four years for the legal age.

In the video below, she explains it to an Australian millionaire on a business podcast like it was a career plan. Because it was.

The host is Mark Bouris. He built a mortgage empire and now interviews founders.

She didn't come to talk about sex. She came to talk about business. "I want to be taken seriously as a businesswoman and an entrepreneur."

He notices it the moment she sits down. Her assistant photographed the camera frame and showed it to her before they started.

"Are you a micromanager?"

"I can be."

The story starts in high school. She says she was teased for how she expressed her sexuality, and porn was the first place she saw women celebrated for it.

So at 14 she made a decision. At 18 she told her mum. No softening it.

"I'm just gonna go across the other side of the globe and shoot pornography."

She'd never been overseas alone before.

She says the one thing she'd change is how she told her mother. Not the decision itself.

Fast forward. She's the only performer ever to win AVN Female Performer of the Year three times. The "Oscars of porn." At her peak she was shooting 20 to 25 scenes a month.

Then Bouris asks what everyone wants to ask. "Are we talking millions of dollars a year?"

She won't give a number.

"I am in the top 0.01% of OnlyFans earners. So yeah, I make very good money. But I also work very hard."

And the pricing is the part that surprised him. She sells her videos for $3 to $5. She's watched other girls sell the exact same collab scene for $200.

Her reason is pure retention math. Cheap enough that fans buy again and again.

A schoolgirl with a four-year plan, a Miami flight and a business model built on $5 videos. The 0.01% didn't happen by accident.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@klunzor probably go full OF and stop pretending it's about the skits

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Asa Akira shot her first porn video at 19. Her grandfather was a Japanese diplomat, she went to private school, and in high school she interned at a fashion magazine.

It started when a stranger stopped her on the street and asked if she wanted to work in adult entertainment. She said yes and followed him upstairs to his dungeon that same day.

Her parents found out much later, because she was dog-sitting at their place and forgot to empty the trash on their computer.

And when Bobby Lee asks about the worst job of her life, she doesn’t name anything from that world. She names the fashion magazine.

In the video below, she tells Bobby Lee all of it like she’s describing her first summer job.

It starts with Bobby remembering her from years ago. Then he checked Facebook and saw her new job title: dominatrix.

She confirms it. One year. She was 19.

A man walked up to her on the street with the offer. “Yeah, I do.” Upstairs, she started training the same day.

Bobby asks why that, of all things.

Her answer is the part nobody expects. She went to private school. She didn’t know a single stripper. She didn’t even know what her options were. So when a stranger offered her a door, she thought: this is my chance.

From there it moved fast. Dominatrix, then stripper, then a short stint on radio, then a well-known adult star brought her into the industry.

And her parents?

By then she was already married and living on her own. But she was house-sitting for them, used their computer, downloaded photos from the dungeon’s website, and left them in the trash.

They found them. “What is this?”

Then Bobby asks about the family. Her parents are immigrants from Japan. Her dad moved to New York at 16 and stayed when his parents went back. His father, her grandfather, was a diplomat.

You’d expect the usual backstory: an absent father, abuse, an addict in the house. She says that’s often true for girls in the industry. Just not for her.

“My parents did a perfect job.” They’re still married.

That’s what makes her story hard to file away. No broken home. No debt. No one pushing her.

Just a smart kid from a good family who got bored of the path everyone planned for her, met a stranger on the right street, and said yes.

She went on to win Performer of the Year, wrote a memoir, and became one of the most recognized names in the industry.

And the job she still talks about like a bad memory is the one her parents would have bragged about.

A diplomat’s granddaughter, a private-school kid, a fashion intern and a porn star by 19. The only part she regrets is the magazine.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Sasha Grey watched her older sibling sit on $80,000 of debt with no job. So at 18 she skipped college and spent six months researching a different career like a business plan.

Pay rates. Which companies to avoid. Which agents answer the phone. Then she drove to LA.

In the video below, she tells Bobby Lee about it the way most people describe applying for an internship.

She was a straight-A student. She was on track to graduate two years early. Then she hit a wall: she’d spent her whole life chasing grades so she could go to college, get a job and be fine.

Then she looked at her family. One of her older siblings had done exactly that. College, $80,000 in debt, and still couldn’t find work.

She tried college anyway. It felt like high school again. She left.

What she did next is the part people get wrong. The usual story in her industry is a broke girl on an audition couch who needs the money. She says that wasn’t her.

She made lists. She messaged women already working in the industry and asked what she should expect to be paid. She went through message boards. She built one list of people to avoid and another list of agencies.

She emailed four or five agencies. Almost nobody wrote back.

One agent finally called. His first questions: does she really look like her photos, and does she have her own car.

That was 2006.

2006: researches the industry for 6 months, signs with an agent, moves to LA
2009: lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience
2010: recurring role on HBO’s Entourage
2011: leaves the adult industry at 23
2020: tells this story on TigerBelly
Her sibling followed the safe plan and ended up with a bill. She followed a spreadsheet and ended up a household name.
Was that the smartest career move of her generation, or just a different kind of debt?
Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Bunnie XO wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $5,000. The man sleeping on her couch had nothing.

Ten years later he’s Jelly Roll, a multimillionaire country star. And he’s the one who filed for divorce.

In the video below, she explains it like a business owner talking about her first company, not a love story.

She sits down with podcaster Sofia Franklyn, and the first thing she brings up is the label she hates. “Jelly Roll’s wife.”

When they got together, people called her a gold digger. Her answer: he didn’t have anything. He was the one sleeping on her couch.

So where was the money coming from?

She tells it straight. Raised in Vegas. Waitress, real estate, any regular job she could get, and still barely making rent. Then 11 years dancing. Then escort work, but on her own terms. Her own ads, her own screening, her own price.

“I wouldn’t even get out of bed for less than $5,000.”

Jelly Roll didn’t believe it. One night she made around $20,000, and he told her there was no way she was making that much.

He offered to take care of her so she could leave that life. She said no.

“I’m never going to live off of you no matter what I have to do.”

Later, OnlyFans took her out of that work. In the same interview she says it made her a millionaire.

Then his career took off. Grammys, stadium tours, a household name.

2015: they meet at his show in Las Vegas
2016: he proposes onstage, they marry the same night
2022: she tells this story on Sofia with an F
May 18, 2026: Jelly Roll files for divorce in Tennessee
June 2026: she says the split wasn’t mutual, and that he’s giving her a property in the settlement
The woman who refused to live off him is now the one getting a house in the divorce.
Did she earn that house a decade ago, or does the money go with whoever made it last?
Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@DeAxel_ The part people skip: she said this while still owing “a lot” in taxes, on an extension, sitting in a $4.8M house. Learning fast and being done learning are not the same thing.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Taylor Swift's first six albums were bought by Scooter Braun in 2019, inside a deal worth around $300 million. A year later he sold them on. In 2025 she paid a reported $360 million to get them back, after re-recording every single song so her fans would stop playing the originals.

Braun says he didn't do it for nefarious reasons. He says the only thing he regrets is that they never sat in the same room.

In the video below, Scooter Braun is asked what he regrets about Taylor Swift.

She signed with Big Machine as a teenager. Like most record deals, the label owned her recordings.

June 2019. Braun's company Ithaca buys Big Machine. With it come the masters of her first six albums. She said she found out when the rest of the world did.

Braun says he was under a strict NDA and wasn't legally allowed to tell any artist.

November 2020. Ithaca sells her masters to the investment firm Shamrock Capital. Reported price: over $300 million.

So she starts again. Every album, re-recorded and released as "Taylor's Version." Fans stream the new ones. The old ones lose their value.

2021. Braun sells Ithaca to HYBE for about $1 billion.

May 2025. Swift announces she owns all of her music. Reports put the price at around $360 million. Shamrock reportedly made little or no profit.

Braun says Swifties sent him death threats. "It was the first time that I had ever had any negative press."

Six albums. Two sales. One artist who bought her own work back.

Did Scooter Braun take Taylor Swift's music, or did he just buy a company she'd already left?

Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Melinda French Gates was married to one of the richest men in the world for 27 years. On national TV she named the one man she didn't want in their lives.

May 2021. Bill and Melinda Gates announce they are ending their marriage. Their foundation manages about $50 billion. The world is stunned. They looked like the perfect couple.

Then the details start coming out. Bill admits to an affair years earlier. She says she believed in forgiveness. She thought they had worked through it.

But there was something else.

She had met Jeffrey Epstein once. She went because she wanted to see who this man was. She said she regretted it from the second she stepped in the door, and had nightmares afterwards.

She told Bill exactly how she felt. He kept meeting him anyway.

The divorce was final in August 2021.

Bill later called the meetings "a substantial error in judgment" and "a mistake that I regret deeply."

In 2024 she left the foundation she had built for over 20 years. Under the terms of her agreement with Bill, she walked away with $12.5 billion for her own work.

In the video below Gayle King asks her if Epstein played a role in the divorce. Listen to how she chooses her words.

This year his name came up again in newly released Epstein files. His spokesperson called the new claims completely false. Asked how she felt, she said two words: "unbelievable sadness."

Was $12.5 billion the end of the story, or just the price of walking away quietly?

Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@klunzor just the money. no prenup stops you from cheating with the housekeeper

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Arnold Schwarzenegger walked into a marriage counseling session thinking it was about life after politics. It was about the housekeeper's son.

January 2011. He has just finished two terms as Governor of California. 25 years of marriage to Maria Shriver, a Kennedy. Four kids.

Maria books a session with their counselor. He thinks they'll talk about going back to a private life.

But Maria has been suspicious for a while. She has already spoken to the housekeeper herself, a woman who worked in their home for years.

In the room she asks him one question. Is Joseph yours?

Joseph was born in 1997, within days of their youngest son.

He admits it.

By July she files for divorce. There was no prenup. Under California law that meant a fortune estimated at around $400 million would be split down the middle.

It took 10 years. The divorce was only finalized in December 2021. The terms are sealed. Neither pays the other spousal support.

On 60 Minutes he called the affair "the stupidest thing I've done in the whole relationship." To Howard Stern he called the divorce "the biggest failure."

In the video below he is asked if he wants the marriage back. Watch how long it takes him to answer.

Was $400 million and 10 years in court the real price, or was it the kids?

Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@klunzor 4,000 articles in a year is insane. no wonder she snapped on live TV

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

Heather Mills asked Paul McCartney for £125 million. The judge gave her £24.3 million and called her evidence "inconsistent and inaccurate."

They married in 2002. He was a Beatle. She was a former model who lost a leg in an accident and spent years campaigning against landmines.

Four years later it was over. And it was anything but quiet.

In the middle of the divorce she went on breakfast TV. She said she'd had death threats. She said she'd been close to suicide. She said she'd had worse press than a paedophile or a murderer, after 20 years of charity work.

Her own PR man quit the same day.

By the time it reached court she was representing herself. She told the judge Paul was worth £800 million. The judge put it at about £400 million.

March 2008. The ruling.
She asked for £125 million.
He had offered £15.8 million.
She got £24.3 million, counting the £7.8 million she already had.

The judge called Paul's evidence "balanced." Hers, "inconsistent and inaccurate." Her whole case, "wholly exaggerated."

Later she said she had poured a jug of water over the head of Paul's lawyer.

In the video below she tells breakfast TV exactly what the papers will call her the next morning. Listen to the word she uses.

Was £24.3 million for four years a fair deal, or did she lose the case the day she went on TV?

Every day here: a famous name, a fortune, and who walked off with it.

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@Naijella1986 A Heineken and a sandwich, love that detail. Sounds like your words stayed with her for the whole flight. Do you still have the photo from Tunbridge Wells?

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@Naijella1986 That’s a lovely story. Funny how different people can be in person compared to how the papers paint them. What was she like on the flight?

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@DeAxel_ biggest mistake for sure. you don’t go up against paul mccartney’s lawyers with no lawyer of your own

[Scrooge @Scrooge_mm]

@KevinRo29586739 The judge kind of agreed, he called her case “wholly exaggerated.” Do you think going on TV mid-divorce sank her?