New York’s biggest modeling agencies have been cheating their beauties out of royalties for years, despite pushing their pictures to advertising agencies, a new lawsuit charges.
Top-notch agencies such as Wilhelmina, Ford and Elite Models Management gave inaccurate financial statements, concealed funds received on their clients’ behalf, and used models’ money for other expenses, the court papers say.
The models lost a collective $20 million to the agencies’ shoddy accounting practices, the suit alleges.
“Each of the modeling agencies has money in its accounts that rightfully belongs to models, that is being used by the modeling agencies and which has not been paid to models,” the lawsuit says.
It’s the second class-action suit brought against the modeling agencies in the past decade.
Leading the fight is Louisa Raske, a 5-foot-9 blonde who has appeared on the cover of Brides magazine.
The suit claims models were told they would “never again model in New York” if they sued the agencies. Contract language even waived models’ right to sue, the papers said.