Time is a construct, but scamming is forever, baby. Mariah Carey is at bitter odds with a former assistant she’s now convinced might just be another grifter in the long line of con artists come before her. Carey is suing Lianna Shakhnazaryan, who goes by Lianna Azarian, a woman she says worked as her executive assistant between 2015 and 2017, and during that time, she claims did nothing but extort her. According to the suit, Azarian would allegedly secretly film Carey without her permission “engaged in personal activities which, if revealed, Azarian knew would be personally embarrassing and professionally damaging to Mariah,†and threatened to use that footage to blackmail Carey if she fired her, which Carey did in 2017. Carey claims that she had Azarian sign an NDA when she first started working for her and that all these secret recordings, plus the blackmail, violate that contract. She’s now suing for $3 million, saying in a statement via her lawyer, “This new year welcomes Mariah’s continued efforts to clean the trash from her life.â€
In her suit, Carey also claims that Azarian routinely manipulated her out of money and when she wouldn’t get it that way, she’d just steal it. Azarian first started working for Carey for an agreed upon salary of $250,000 but was then granted a raise to $327,000 when she complained about overtime, despite being told the job would require “irregular†hours because Carey is, well, Mariah Carey. In addition to the increased pay, Azarian would allegedly use Carey’s credit cards for personal purchases. When Azarian was fired in 2017, the suit claims she lawyered up and “demanded millions of dollars and refused to return†the secret recordings.
Azarian is also reportedly suing Carey’s former manager, Stella Bulochnikov, claiming Bulochnikov physically abused her and used racial slurs, all of which she says Carey witnessed and did nothing. According to BuzzFeed, the lawsuit also details an alleged incident in which Azarian said she was held down and peed on by Bulochnikov at work. She also claims Bulochnikov routinely sexually harassed her, including slapping her butt and breasts and calling her a “whore.†Last year, Bulochnikov herself sued Carey for sexual harassment and breach of contract (she was fired the previous year), which Carey alluded to on her song “A No Noâ€; the two just recently settled that lawsuit. But a diva’s work is never done!
This post has been updated throughout.