{"id":864095,"date":"2026-09-29T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864095\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T00:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:00:10","slug":"leaked-audio-hollywood-fixer-tells-client-of-plan-to-smear-fiancee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/864095\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaked Audio: Hollywood Fixer Tells Client of Plan to Smear Fianc\u00e9e"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNew audio recordings obtained by The Hollywood Reporter provide a rare, unvarnished view of modern crisis PR, explaining from the inside both how and why covert campaigns <\/a>have been pursued <\/a>across the entertainment industry and beyond in recent years amid myriad high-stakes feuds. The likes of Justin Baldoni<\/a>, Andrew Huberman<\/a>, Scooter Braun<\/a> and Travis Scott<\/a> have been caught up in revelations about the practice.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe recordings are a series of voice memos made by Jed Wallace, a digital fixer, and shared with his partners at the communications firm TAG PR, as well as a client, Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio. He\u2019s heir to the Milan-based EssilorLuxottica, the world\u2019s largest eyewear company. Its brands include Ray-Ban, Oliver Peoples and Persol. Forbes lists <\/a>his net worth at $5.5 billion.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeaked audio #1: Wallace assures Del Vecchio that he understands \u201cexactly what you\u2019re going through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeaked audio #2: Wallace says of Serfaty: \u201cwow is it going to get fucking nasty for this girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTAG PR\u2019s head, Melissa Nathan, was recently accused in a civil lawsuit of committing perjury<\/a> about her links to smear sites. She\u2019s denied involvement.<\/p>\n

\n\tWallace, Nathan and Del Vecchio did not respond to THR\u2019s inquiries.<\/p>\n

\n\tWallace has faced multiple lawsuits over his work, including from Blake Lively during her legal fight with Baldoni. In court, she claimed<\/a> he \u201cweaponized a digital army\u201d to \u201ccreate, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums\u201d by \u201cexecuting confidential and \u2018untraceable\u2019 campaigns.\u201d (He later unsuccessfully sued<\/a> Lively for defamation.) His own lawyer has described his operation as a \u201ccrisis mitigation firm engaged by clients to help navigate real-life human crisis, threats, trauma and mental health concerns,\u201d contending that it \u201chelps primarily families and individuals when they find themselves unjustly attacked, extorted, doxed, swatted, scammed or need help navigating through the most frightening situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHollywood fixer Jed Wallace is a central figure in the unfolding celebrity smear-site scandal.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIllustration by Christopher Hughes<\/p>\n

\n\tAside from Baldoni, Wallace\u2019s other clients have included actress Rebel Wilson, who is now embroiled in her own defamation litigation with Amanda Ghost, a producer on her film The Deb. THR previously published<\/a> leaked audio of Wallace instructing the top Hollywood publicist Melissa Nathan to assert without evidence that Ghost is a \u201cmadame.\u201d He explained on that recording: \u201cWe can\u2019t just do, like, oh, she\u2019s a bitch, she sucks,\u201d Wallace says in the recording. \u201cIt\u2019s, like, it\u2019s got to be really, really heavy and connected to something that heavy.\u201d (Wilson has denied involvement in the smear campaign against Ghost, although new evidence<\/a> submitted in the case seems to depict her communicating with Nathan about the site.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe recordings appear to show Wallace speaking to Del Vecchio in August 2024, a month after the billionaire\u2019s then-fianc\u00e9e, Jessica Serfaty, a model and actress who had a run for several years on Days of Our Lives, publicly accused him of abuse and then quickly retracted the claim<\/a>. That same August, Los Angeles law enforcement reportedly investigated<\/a> a hidden tracking device placed in Serfaty\u2019s Range Rover.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe prominent Hollywood attorney Bryan Freedman, another figure who\u2019s been accused of a key role<\/a> in the smear site scandal, has described<\/a> Wallace, with whom he\u2019s long collaborated, as a well-resourced operator. In one voice memo, Wallace discusses the tracking device incident, stating he\u2019ll \u201ccall my guy who\u2019s a detective over at the L.A. Sheriff\u2019s\u201d department to assess the situation. He also asserts, \u201cwe know they didn\u2019t find an AirTag, my guys were there,\u201d apparently referring to his relationship with sheriff\u2019s deputies.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe audio messages appear to depict Wallace explaining his digital process, which involves pairing an anonymous smear site with search engine optimization techniques to boost it. \u201cIt is an exquisite thing that\u2019s not just about creating this fake fucking bullshit story for her, this is about creating a lifetime of understanding so when people see stories about her, they know she\u2019s a fucking hooker, liar and a prostitute,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLeonardo Maria Del Vecchio and Jessica Serfaty at the 2024 Met Gala in New York City.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tArturo Holmes\/MG24\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThe smearing site about Serfaty went live on Aug. 15, 2024. It\u2019s since been taken down. Serfaty didn\u2019t respond to THR.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the audio, Wallace seems to provide context on the broader technical implementation of the plan, detailing how he pays for advertising to drive search traffic \u201cback to our site, which is awesome.\u201d He also shares how other, related online work is already yielding results against Serfaty, exulting: \u201cwow, is it going to get fucking nasty for this girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere in the recordings, Wallace \u2014 who notes, as professional qualification, \u201cI\u2019ve dealt with global leaders who were accused of rape\u201d \u2014 asserts that exculpatory evidence or even a recantation doesn\u2019t matter in the court of public opinion. \u201cNobody [gives] a fuck, because people want the tragedy.\u201d Which is why, he explains, \u201cwe have to build a credible story that establishes [Serfaty] as a liar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of Wallace\u2019s job is ego management. <\/a>In one recording, he tells Del Vecchio that his client list includes \u201cworld leaders, celebrities, diplomats, high-profile individuals\u201d \u2014 \u201cI have to pick and choose who the fuck I work with.\u201d He assures Del Vecchio that he understands \u201cexactly what you\u2019re going through,\u201d listing off the pressures of \u201clegacy, family, your father\u2019s name \u2026 your entire world. I get it.\u201d Wallace explains that Del Vecchio\u2019s problem is \u201cour priority\u201d and \u201cwe know what we\u2019re doing,\u201d signing off with: \u201cYou are loved, my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year, Italian prosecutors have been pursuing a case against Del Vecchio<\/a> as part of a larger investigation into a private intelligence firm called Equalize, which has been accused of criminal hacking<\/a> its founders deny. Prosecutors allege Del Vecchio commissioned unauthorized background checks against Serfaty as well as other Del Vecchio family members amid an ongoing inheritance dispute. He\u2019s denied wrongdoing and claimed he was unaware of any illegal methods used by the agency, which itself has contended it didn\u2019t work for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New audio recordings obtained by The Hollywood Reporter provide a rare, unvarnished view of modern crisis PR, explaining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,177362],"class_list":["post-864095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-thr-investigates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}