Five investors have filed a Wondermind investor fraud lawsuit against Selena Gomez and the mental health platform she co-founded, accusing her and her fellow founders of misrepresenting the company’s position and allowing it to collapse while keeping shareholders in the dark.
The claimants are seeking to recover around $1.2m (approximately £890,000) they say was invested in Wondermind Global, along with costs and damages. Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey, and businesswoman Daniella Pierson are all named in the suit. The BBC has contacted Wondermind and Gomez’s representatives for comment.
What the Wondermind investor fraud lawsuit alleges
The lawsuit claims Wondermind’s founders ‘falsely represented’ the state of the business, telling investors that a ‘full slate’ of advertising deals, celebrity cover stories and a mobile app were already in progress. Gomez, the complaint states, ‘purported to sign a contract obligating her to perform and then ignored it’, despite being promised as the company’s active head of marketing.
According to the New York Times, promised partnerships with J.P. Morgan and Fidelity, in which Wondermind would provide mental health and wellness services to those companies’ employees, ‘did not exist’. None of the partnerships shareholders were told about, including those corporate tie-ups, ever materialised, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also alleges the company failed to meet ‘even its most basic obligations, such as timely paying its employees and vendors’. The claimants say they had no idea the business was in trouble until an investigative piece by online magazine The Cut surfaced in September 2025, making allegations about Wondermind’s finances and management. ‘For three years, while the company quietly collapsed around them, not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors whose money was funding the collapse,’ the complaint states.
The Cut’s reporting showed, the lawsuit claims, that ‘Wondermind had no plan for its future, much less a plan for achieving a multi-billion dollar valuation’.
A troubled picture that predates the lawsuit
Forbes had already reported in May 2025 that Wondermind had run out of cash and failed to pay its employees the month prior. Forbes also reported that the company had laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce.
Wondermind was launched in 2022, built around the philosophy that looking after your mental health requires consistent daily effort, much as physical exercise does. The platform aimed to make mental health content more accessible through a digital service, and recruited investors to fund that ambition.
The company was set up five years ago by Gomez alongside her mother and Pierson, partly inspired by Gomez’s own openness about her mental health, including her experience with bipolar disorder. Pierson has since left the business. Gomez is still listed as a co-founder on the Wondermind website, below her mother, who now holds the chief executive role.
Gomez, who is 34, has over 500 million followers across social media, making her one of the most-followed women in the world. She also co-founded cosmetics company Rare Beauty in 2020, and is estimated to have a net worth of nearly $1bn.
Who is behind the claim
The individuals filing the Wondermind investor fraud lawsuit are based in New York and Florida. Among them is Brent Saunders, chief executive of eye-health company Bausch + Lomb.
The complaint’s language is pointed. Shareholders claim Gomez’s ‘abject dereliction of her duties’ has left Wondermind in a ‘state of financial calamity’. The scale of that alleged dereliction, from unpaid staff to phantom corporate deals, forms the core of what investors say they were never told.
The next stage in the case will be determined by the courts. Wondermind and Gomez’s representatives had not responded to the BBC’s request for comment at the time of publication.
