Scott Storch, a meerkat wearing sunglasses, once produced mega-hits for artists like Beyoncé, Chris Brown and 50 Cent. Because of that, he used to have a whole hell of a lot of money, which was way more than the amount of money he currently has, which is no money.

According to TMZ, Storch filed for bankruptcy yesterday. The site reports that he claimed $3,600 in assets. Three thousand of those dollars come from a single watch, and another 500 comes from the alleged value of his clothes. The remaining difference—$1oo—is allegedly the amount of cash he has on hand, although one imagines that figure might be lower if Storch has fed himself at any point in the last 12 hours.

At an earlier point in his life, Storch had so many hundred dollar bills that if he dropped one on the sidewalk he might not even have bothered to pick it up. A memorable long article on his life published by the Miami New Times in 2010 detailed the type of spending you would expect from someone who, by some estimates, once was worth $70 million, but who is now, at least according to his accountants, worth next to nothing.

He stocked his garage with at least 13 vehicles, including a $600,000 Mercedes SLR McLaren, a $500,000 Mercedes Maybach, and a $1.7 million black Bugatti Veyron — the most expensive car on the market. A $3 million 34-carat yellow-diamond pinkie ring crowned his personal jewelry collection, which also included a diamond watch formerly owned by Michael Jackson. He paid $20 million for a 125-foot yacht. And the pièce de résistance: his 2006 purchase of a 18,000-square-foot white-columned Palm Island mansion, dubbed Villa Ferrari, for $10.5 million. Storch shuffled through women who were equally expensive. He gave heiress Paris Hilton a Maybach and flew her to the French Riviera via private jet — at a cost of $275,000, according to XXL Magazine — and became full-fledged paparazzi prey by reportedly dating Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian, rapper Lil’ Kim, and porn star Heather Hunt.

The ultimate root cause of his downfall, though, is a story as old Storch himself.

More than once, manager Jackson showed up at Villa Ferrari to coax Storch into getting clean. The inside of the mansion resembled a crack house, strewn with garbage and paraphernalia. Storch was surrounded by “takers” — fellow addicts, gold diggers, and bumbling handlers. Constantly snorting bumps of coke, he now paired his jewelry with shirts stained from “blood that would just gush out of his nose at any given time.” Storch seemed to Jackson like an animal, capable of viciousness but not reason: “Scott didn’t give a fuck. You can’t be humiliated while you’re high. You’re not conscious of the destruction you’re wreaking on the lives of people around you. You feel nothing, you see nothing, but the drug.”

Most recently, Storch, looking suspiciously like Verne Troyer, was filmed getting a haircut while smoking a cigarette and making some fucked up-ass EDM beat.

So at least he has that.



[image via Getty]