Vicki Gunvalson is being sued by a former client of her insurance company for financial elder abuse, negligence and fraud, among other allegations.
Diane Field, who is 74 years old, filed her lawsuit against Real Housewives of Orange County star Gunvalson and business partner Ali Hashemian at the Superior Court of California in Orange County in late May, according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Wednesday, July 31.
Field stated that she and her late husband, George, had a combined net worth of $6 million, and that she managed their finances after he was “seriously injured in a bicycle accident” in 2002. That same year, Field’s mother died and left an inheritance. Field transferred the funds into an Allianz 222 annuity, a savings plan that helps decrease a person’s taxes. “Diane has always left the money in this account (never been touched) for the sole purpose of growing it for her daughter,” she claimed in her filing.
Field recalled meeting Gunvalson, 62, in 2019, when she attended a dinner hosted by the Bravo star and her company, Coto Insurance & Financial Services. According to Field, Gunvalson told her at the time “that she could help her manage her finances.” Field claimed she later met with Gunvalson and Hashemian, who promised her that “if she invested her money with them, she would have lower income taxes and increased future/potential financial capital for her children.”
When George’s health took a turn for the worse, Diane hired a live-in caregiver. “Looking back, [she] thinks the anguish and trauma she was enduring at this time contributed to her letting herself put her trust in Gunvalson and Hashemian as they seemed so sincere and appeared to be working for Diane’s best interests,” the filing stated.
Field alleged that the pair pushed her to invest in a life insurance policy without explaining “how much it would cost.” Hashemian, she claimed, had said that she needed to only make a “one and done” payment of $300,000 to cover the $6 million that would be paid to her family after her death.
In hindsight, “Diane realizes this was an intentional, misleading, and false misrepresentation. Instead, it was the perfect time for Hashemian to tell her that she would need to pay $300,000 yearly for this policy, which he never told Diane,” the suit claimed.
Field inked a contract in December 2019 in “reliance on Gunvalson’s “fraudulent sales tactics” and while feeling “despair” over George’s physical decline. In 2020, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery to treat it. Several weeks after her operation, she paid another $300,000 toward her life insurance.
“Even though she thought she only had to make this $300,000 payment once when she opened the policy based on what Hashemian had promised her, her hands were tied up, and she paid it again because she felt like she had no other choice,” the legal docs claimed.
George died in October 2021, and Field claimed that afterward, Gunvalson and Hashemian persuaded her to put George’s funds into a standalone annuity account. The following year, “she started to question why she was paying this $300,000 premium yet again, as this was not what Hashemian had promised her, but she went ahead and did it anyway, as her husband had recently passed away and she was still mourning his loss (and she was recovering from her own hip surgery).”
In December 2022, Field claimed that she emailed Gunvalson and Hashemian, writing that “she felt uninformed by them and that the annuities and life insurance policy they convinced her to open did not seem to be the best investments for her, as they tie up large sums of money for a long time that she may never be able to use, for maybe longer than she will live or will be too old to enjoy.”
In March 2023, Gunvalson offered Field the option to lower her life-insurance premium to $100,000 annually, and Field took the deal and “sold some of her stock” to make that first $100K payment. Meanwhile, her death benefit had been reduced to $3.5 million.
When Field was supposed to pay the next $100K in the spring of 2024, Gunvalson “repeatedly contacted Diane to remind her.” Instead, Field bypassed Gunvalson and “reached out to Allianz directly in April 2024 to see what the due date was, and a representative at Allianz told Diane that she had over $600,000 in her account since she was previously paying $300,000 a year in premiums. Diane was told that she does not have to send any payment at all because of this excess in her account.”
In conclusion, Field’s suit declared, “Defendants planned and engaged in their pattern of elder financial abuse with malice, oppression, and fraud.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Gunvalson, Hashemian and Coto Insurance for comment.
This wasn’t the first time one of Gunvalson’s former clients has sued her. Joan Lile, then 82, accused the reality star in 2019 of raising premium costs. That lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice.
Gunvalson’s former costar, Teddi Mellencamp, seemingly reacted to the lawsuit on Tuesday, July 30, writing on X, “I HAVE NEVER ABUSED MULTIPLE ELDERS IN MY LIFE.” RHOC fans will know that Mellencamp, 43, was riffing on an iconic Gunvalson line from season 8 of the series. That line: “I have never been with multiple partners in my life!”
