Thompson Reuters heiress loses $80M+ in crypto after best friend invests based on psychic's advice

Summary

Taylor Thompson, an heiress to Canada's Thomson Reuters empire, and Ashley Richardson, a social media strategist, met in 2009 at a Malibu house party and bonded over shared interests in spirituality, animals, and what Richardson describes as silliness. Over the next decade, they traveled together, shopped together, and formed what Richardson calls an inseparable inner circle. Thompson's wealth—she is part of the world's 10th richest family—never became a friction point. "There was no financial connection," Richardson recalled. "The reason we'd be friends is there was no financial connection."

By 2021, Richardson's work had dried up. In a moment of anxiety, she Googled for predictions about her future and found Michelle White, a celebrity psychic offering a $25-per-month newsletter. White had recommended a cryptocurrency token called Persistence, describing it as a "dark horse that's going to come up on everybody and be a big dog." The token quadrupled from under $3 in April to as high as $13 by May.

Richardson mentioned White's prediction to Thompson, who consulted her own financial advisor: Robert Sabella, an astrologer and intuitive she regularly consulted on personal and financial matters. Sabella gave Persistence a "10" rating on his astrological scale, alongside another coin, ADA. With Richardson's help executing trades, Thompson invested more than $40 million in Persistence tokens. Richardson occasionally pushed back—when Thompson suggested buying $60 million worth, Richardson texted her to diversify—but Thompson pressed forward.

Over the following months, Richardson spent as many as 20 hours daily managing roughly $140 million in crypto holdings, storing physical wallets in her home, including at one point in her partner's underwear drawer. She received no compensation for this work and had no financial background.

Persistence's token, XPRT, has since collapsed from its $13 peak to less than three cents. Thompson lost more than $80 million. The lawsuit alleges that Persistence secretly rewarded Richardson with 783,726 XPRT tokens as a kickback for bringing a whale investor, a conflict of interest she never disclosed to Thompson.

Thompson, who had long been suspicious of people using her for money and hired private investigators to monitor associates, is now using investigators to pursue Richardson. Richardson, who once lived a "charmed, magnificent life" in Los Angeles with a thriving career and community, now drives for Uber along California's Central Coast. She has applied for food stamps and cannot afford medication for her dog.

Richardson frames the relationship's collapse not as malice but as consequence: "I look at them and say this is the catastrophe of having money."

A billionaire heiress isolated by family disputes over control of the Thomson Reuters holding company outsourced investment decisions to astrology and a friend without licensing or fiduciary duty. That friend, lacking financial expertise and unaware of her own conflicts of interest, executed massive trades based on celebrity psychic predictions. The result was total loss and the destruction of a decade-long friendship.