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LOUDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE – AUGUST 21: Frankie Muniz, driver of the #33 Dr Sheffield’s The Original Toothpaste Ford, looks on during practice for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Team EJP 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on August 21, 2026 in Loudon, New Hampshire. (Photo by Meg Oliphant\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Frankie Muniz was one of the biggest child stars in Hollywood, earning a fortune before he was old enough to understand what was happening to his money.<\/p>\n
Now a NASCAR driver<\/a>, the former \u201cMalcolm in the Middle\u201d star is opening up about a troubling discovery that made him question someone his family had trusted with his finances for years.<\/p>\n It started with a single charge for $41,000.<\/p>\n Muniz says his then-girlfriend noticed the expense while reviewing his financial records. The charge was listed as \u201cresearch,\u201d but Muniz had no idea what it was for.<\/p>\n What happened next, he says, exposed much bigger problems.<\/p>\n Frankie Muniz says his girlfriend found a $41K charge for \u201cresearch\u201d made by his business manager, who was actually stealing from him<\/p>\n \u201cIt killed me\u2026 I really, really trusted [him]\u201d <\/p>\n Frankie Muniz Recalls $41,000 Charge That Raised Red Flags<\/p>\n During an appearance on Andrew Gold\u2019s \u201cHeretics\u201d podcast<\/a>, Muniz discussed the financial arrangements his family made when his acting career took off.<\/p>\n He was just a child when \u201cMalcolm in the Middle\u201d became a hit, and managing the money that followed wasn\u2019t something he handled himself.<\/p>\n Instead, his family relied on a business manager Muniz says he trusted deeply.<\/p>\n That trust began to unravel when his girlfriend noticed the unusual charge.<\/p>\n According to Muniz\u2019s account, she asked him about the $41,000 expense, which had been categorized as research. He didn\u2019t recognize it and asked her to contact his business manager.<\/p>\n Muniz recalled that the manager became visibly rattled when questioned about the charge.<\/p>\n The discovery prompted a much closer examination of his finances. What began with one suspicious expense soon led Muniz to review years of financial records and question other transactions.<\/p>\n \u201cI really, really trusted him,\u201d Muniz said in a clip from the interview shared by CoveredGeekly<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Muniz, the hardest part wasn\u2019t simply the amount of money involved. It was realizing that someone he had relied on since childhood might not have been looking out for his interests.<\/p>\n Muniz Says Financial Problems Went Far Beyond One Charge<\/p>\n As Muniz dug deeper into his records, he says he found additional expenses he couldn\u2019t explain, including unusually high insurance costs associated with his collection of cars.<\/p>\n Muniz has recalled owning 38 cars before his 18th birthday, a striking example of how much his life had changed after becoming a television star.<\/p>\n But having money and knowing how it was being managed were two very different things.<\/p>\n He has described knowing how much he earned from acting without having a clear understanding of where the money was kept or how it was being spent.<\/p>\n According to Muniz, he eventually accumulated boxes of financial documents while trying to piece together what had happened. He also said the statute of limitations prevented him from pursuing the matter through law enforcement by the time he understood the extent of his concerns.<\/p>\n Those allegations reflect Muniz\u2019s account of his experience and have not been independently established.<\/p>\n Today, Muniz is pursuing a very different career behind the wheel in NASCAR<\/a>. But his reflections on growing up in Hollywood offer a reminder of just how much responsibility can fall into other people\u2019s hands when a child becomes the family\u2019s biggest earner.<\/p>\n And in Muniz\u2019s case, he says it took one $41,000 line item to make him start asking questions he wished he\u2019d asked years earlier.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMaggie MacKenzie<\/a> Maggie MacKenzie covers NASCAR for Heavy.com. She previously worked for NASCAR.com, where she reported, wrote, and edited race-weekend coverage and traveled to key events throughout the season. She has more than ten years of experience in sports media and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. More about Maggie MacKenzie<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty LOUDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE – AUGUST 21: Frankie Muniz, driver of the #33 Dr Sheffield’s The Original Toothpaste…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-939726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}