The post Las Vegas Strip Club Dancer Scorns Jilted Businessman’s $3.5m Fraud Suit appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.
Defendant fights back
A Las Vegas woman has ridiculed a $3.5m lawsuit filed against her by a rich ex who claimed she defrauded him.
Arkansas manufacturing magnate Fred Brunner, 63, claims Melanie Beth Sterling “hoodwinked” him into thinking their romantic relationship was exclusive and is trying to get back millions he lavished on her.
Brunner is claiming $3.5m in compensation and $35m in punitive damages.
gave him a private dance
Sterling and Brunner met at a Vegas Strip club in 2014, where the defendant was an exotic dancer. According to the jilted ex’s lawsuit, Brunner was going through a divorce when Stirling approached and gave him a private dance.
During that dance, the suit filed in July in District Court states, Sterling learned that Brunner “was far wealthier than her normal patrons – wealthy enough to change her life.”
A ten-year relationship ensued, with the original complaint stating Stirling orchestrated the arrangement with the intent to defraud.
Last week, Stirling filed a motion to dismiss the case, ridiculing Brunner’s claim that he fell victim to a “relationship scam” by saying: “Haven’t we all.”
Sour grapes?
According to the complaint, the exotic dancer tapped-up Brunner, the president of Brunner & Lay, an international-scale pneumatic and hydraulic tool manufacturing giant based in Arkansas, for financial support over 100 times in ten years.
Brunner admits in his lawsuit to giving Stirling over $2.1m over the course of their relationship, $720,000 of which, he claims, the dancer used to pay for a home in Las Vegas.
Sterling’s motion, while admitting Brunner was “generous with his wealth,” dismisses his lawsuit as sour grapes.
Sterling stated that “everyone else does not sue their ex claiming that they were duped into spending money on them when the relationship does not work out in the end.”
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sterling’s attorney, Jim Jimmerson, said the two were “in a long-term relationship, which should have concluded with each party going their separate ways.”
Jimmerson added that Brunner has now filed four versions of his complaint against his client, the first in 2024, just after Sterling alleged that he “begged and pleaded for her to come back to him.” After she refused, and Brunner became aware of her “friendship” with another man, Shanta Cotright, he allegedly filed suit, also accusing Sterling of being “covertly engaged in a romantic relationship.”
No binding ties
Brunner’s complaints include Sterling allegedly faking illness to dodge a date only to be pictured with Cotright eating lobster in Vegas, and that the pair used most of the money he gave Stirling on “lavish dinners, parties, trips and purchases.”
never married, never engaged”
Sterling’s motion, however, essentially maintains she doesn’t owe Brunner a dime because they “were never married, never engaged and never lived in the same house.”
Sterling added that she thought Brunner “was not the monogamous type” and that, being extremely rich, he was “used to getting what he wanted.”
Clark County District Court will hear Sterling’s motion to dismiss on October 21.
The post Las Vegas Strip Club Dancer Scorns Jilted Businessman’s $3.5m Fraud Suit appeared first on Vegas Slots Online News.
