Pop star Selena Gomez and her mom Mandy Teefey are being accused of fraud in a new lawsuit by investors who say they failed to fulfil their duties to build and promote her mental health startup.
Gomez and Teefey are accused of allegedly deceiving investors of their mental health startup Wondermind to continue funding the company, according to legal documents obtained and viewed by Global News.
Wondermind was co-founded by Gomez, Teefey and Daniella Pierson in November 2021 and claims to share “doable ways to put your mental fitness first every day,” according to the website.
The lawsuit accuses Wondermind and the founders of falsely representing the company’s “infrastructure, leadership, and resources necessary for the Company to launch into a profitable, one-of-its-kind mental health and wellness platform.”
The suit also claims that the defendants told the plaintiff’s three things, including that Gomez would be “actively building the Company as its head of marketing,” that Pierson was “a $200 million executive whose prior businesses generated $40 million a year and who had already secured institutional employer partnerships with JPMorgan and Fidelity” and that a “full slate of revenue-generating initiatives, including advertising deals, celebrity cover stories, and a groundbreaking app, were already underway.”
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“Gomez purported to sign a contract obligating her to perform and then ignored it. The partnerships did not exist. The initiatives never materialized. The app was never built,” the legal documents allege.
Global News has reached out to Gomez’s representatives, but has not received a response.
It also claims that while Wondermind “quietly collapsed,” the founders allegedly did not say “a word to the investors whose money was funding the collapse.”
The investors allegedly learned about the news from an online article published in September 2025 by The Cut, titled “What Happened at Wondermind?”
“In detail, that article outlined the state of utter disarray at the Company, including Teefey’s apparent substance abuse disorder and her gross mismanagement of the Company; Gomez’s abject dereliction of her duties to the Company and, indeed, her active efforts to distance herself from it, given her long-running personal struggles with her mother, Teefey; an executive power struggle at Wondermind, resulting in Pierson’s outser from the Company and a leadership void and the Company’s failture to meet even its most basic obligations, such as timely paying its employees and venders,” the lawsuit states.
The investors claim they put USD$1.2 million into Wondermind and are now accusing the company of securities fraud, common law fraud and breach of contract.
The lawsuit also shares allegations of investors being given updates that they claim were misleading or false.
It says that from 2022 to 2025, the plaintiffs “proactively” contacted Teefey and Pierson for updates on the company.
“When the Defendants would provide updates — either by email or on a phone call — they concealed the significant operational and financial issues at the Company. Indeed, the Defendants affirmatively misrepresented that the Company was performing well,” the lawsuit alleges.
The investors are seeking rescission of their investments in Wondermind, damages, costs and lawyers’ fees.
—With files from Reuters
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
