There’s a specific kind of irony baked into a mental health startup accused of, essentially, gaslighting its own investors for three straight years, and it’s worth sitting with that irony for a second before getting into the details, because the details are genuinely something.
Selena Gomez and her mother, Mandy Teefey, along with co-founder Daniella Pierson, are now facing a federal fraud lawsuit over Wondermind, the mental fitness company the trio launched together back in November 2021.
The suit, filed Thursday in Delaware, accuses the company’s founders of misrepresenting Wondermind’s infrastructure, leadership, and partnerships to investors, and of quietly sitting on that misrepresentation for more than three years while, according to the complaint, the whole thing came apart around them.
The pitch, as investors understood it, was straightforward enough: nearly $1.2 million went in on the promise of a full company buildout, an app, a podcast, an editorial arm, the works, all of it powered in no small part by Gomez’s own involvement.
Not just her name on a press release, but Gomez as head of marketing, actively signed on, actively working. That’s the detail the lawsuit keeps circling back to, because according to the complaint, none of it actually happened. “Gomez purported to sign a contract obligating her to perform and then ignored it,” the suit alleges. “The partnerships did not exist. The initiatives never materialized. The app was never built.” And for three years, while all of that quietly failed to materialize, the suit claims nobody running the company said a word to the people whose money was funding the collapse.
Gomez’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, has already signaled a motion to dismiss is coming, calling the fraud allegations “completely meritless, both factually and legally.” Pierson, for her part, has issued her own denial, insisting she never touched investor funds for personal expenses and, if anything, put her own money into the business while drawing no salary at all. Representatives for Wondermind and Teefey hadn’t responded to requests for comment as of Thursday.
The updates investors did receive, according to the suit, weren’t just thin, they were actively misleading. Back in June 2022, Pierson reportedly told investors the company had crossed 150,000 subscribers in a single month, that major advertising deals were in motion, that at least $5 million in ad revenue was expected that year alone, and that celebrity cover stories were lined up with names like Camila Cabello, Tim Cook, Elton John, Drake, and Megan Thee Stallion. She’s also alleged to have floated a future valuation north of $4 billion. None of that, per the lawsuit, held up.
What makes this particular collapse harder to keep quiet is that outside reporting had already started cracking it open before this lawsuit ever landed. A Forbes piece from August 2025, bluntly titled “‘Smoke and Mirrors’: How This Entrepreneur Exaggerated and Self-Promoted Her Way Into Turmoil,” took direct aim at Pierson, questioning the readership numbers and valuation she’d claimed for her prior venture, The Newsette, and the partnerships she’d said she’d locked down with JPMorgan and Fidelity.
According to the suit, when investors went to Teefey afterward for an explanation, she reportedly told them Pierson had misappropriated investor funds, including theirs, to bankroll a lifestyle that included $60,000 a month in rent on a New York City apartment, before Pierson was pushed out of the company in January 2023. The catch, per the complaint, is that Teefey had apparently never mentioned any of this to investors before the article forced her hand.
Then came a September piece in The Cut, “What Happened at Wondermind?”, built on interviews with current and former employees, painting a picture of a company that reportedly never had a real plan at all, let alone one that could justify the multi-billion-dollar valuation being pitched around. That article also alleged Teefey struggled with a long-running substance abuse issue that affected her ability to run the company, and that Gomez had been quietly pulling away from Wondermind entirely amid a personal family dispute with her own mother. The lawsuit leans on that reporting as further evidence that the company was, in its words, in a state of financial calamity, with no legitimate enterprise actually operating underneath the pitch.
By November, investors had had enough and sent a formal notice of rescission, demanding their money back. According to the suit, the response wasn’t a refund, it was more stalling. Teefey allegedly told one investor representative that an escrow account existed to return the funds, then simply stopped responding once pressed for actual details. The lawsuit’s own conclusion on that point is blunt: there was no escrow account. There was no plan to give the money back at all.
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aken together, the suit accuses Wondermind and its founders of securities fraud, common-law fraud, and breach of contract, misrepresenting the company’s finances, Gomez’s actual involvement, Pierson’s business track record, and Teefey’s fitness to run a startup she’d never run anything like before. Pierson individually faces additional claims of conversion and unjust enrichment. What the investors are asking for is rescission, essentially unwinding the entire investment as though it never happened, plus damages on top.