Dane Cook brother: Heartbreaking toll of $12M theft revealed

Comedian Dane Cook says the roughly $12 million his older half-brother and former business manager, Darryl McCauley, stole from him hurt far more than his bank account. Promoting his new documentary, “Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story,” which was released on demand Sept. 29, Cook, 54, told Fox News Digital that the Dane Cook brother betrayal reopened childhood wounds, Page Six reported.

“It was the scarlet letter of humiliation that I felt like he branded on me,” Cook said of the Dane Cook brother theft.

Why the Dane Cook brother theft cut so deep

Cook said what hurt most was that McCauley knew his deepest insecurities. “It was like, forget about all the, you know, the criminal, all of it. It’s like, he knew I was the kid on the playground with the terrible cystic acne who hated myself,” he told Fox News Digital.

He described a gap between his public persona and what his brother knew about him in private. “Publicly, I’m the bell of the ball, all the cool stuff that’s happening there, but he knew, only he knew that I’d come home every day after school with panic attacks and dreading the next day having to go to school because I was just so scared of people,” Cook said.

Cook said much of his career, from his stand-up to his early fan outreach on MySpace, was a way of managing those feelings and telling fans, in effect, “I’m just like you, but I just did it.”

“The money can come and go, and fame can come and go, and that’s life,” he said, per Page Six. “But that part that he knew about of me was, like man, he let that happen to me.”

A year off, therapy and grief

In a separate interview about the Dane Cook brother fallout with Deadline, Cook said recovering took more than rebuilding his finances. “I didn’t just pick myself up and do arenas and make [the money] back,” he said.

He said he realized he needed help grieving his parents, who had died a few years earlier, along with his mentor, Frank Roberts, “who was really like my other dad and creative inspiration in school.” Losing them and then his brother led him to therapy and to the only extended break of his career. Cook said he stepped away from stand-up for almost a full year, “I want to say 2010 or 2011.”

Turning loss into fuel

Cook told Deadline he now sees the ordeal as part of his story rather than the end of it. “I believe that nothing’s falling apart, it’s only ever falling together,” he said. “Take the things that happened to you and make them a part of your winning formula, and don’t let them cause you to sputter. You’ve got to use it as fuel.”

He described the documentary as his chance to tell that story on his own terms. “I feel like I can own this moment as a creative person,” Cook said, comparing this chapter to “the Empire Strikes Back story in the greater story of my career.”

How the Dane Cook brother scandal unfolded

Cook discovered in 2008 that McCauley had been diverting his money for years, forging bank statements and checks, Deadline reported. McCauley was arrested in 2008 after fleeing with nearly $3 million, and investigators later found he had taken nearly $12 million in all, according to Page Six. Variety reported that some of the cash was wrapped in plastic and hidden in pasta sauce jars.

McCauley pleaded guilty in 2010 to multiple counts of larceny, forgery and embezzlement, and his wife, Erika McCauley, pleaded guilty to larceny charges. Both were ordered to pay restitution, and Variety reported that McCauley was sentenced to six years in prison. Cook waived the restitution owed by Erika after she took part in the documentary, Page Six reported.

Cook suspects the total taken in the Dane Cook brother scheme was even higher than $12 million. “I do believe that there’s money out there. I believe there’s people that know more,” he said, according to Variety.

Looking ahead

The Dane Cook brother saga is at the center of “Funny Money,” and Cook will host a screening and Q&A of the film at the New York Comedy Festival on Nov. 15. Deadline noted that his festival return comes 20 years after he became the first stand-up comedian to play two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in one night.

Cook credited his sisters and his wife, Kelsi, whom he married three years ago, with helping him through it. “This documentary wouldn’t be here without her,” he told Fox News Digital. “She’s brought faith back into my life in ways that were just absolutely lovely.”

For more celebrity news, read about Carlos Mencia’s tax arrest and Amy Schumer opening up about her health, or visit our Celebrities & Pop Culture section.

Reporting from Deadline, Variety and Page Six contributed to this story.