My Unorthodox Life star's 'torture chamber' hell: Julia Haart on furious $90 million battle with her lingerie boss ex-husband... and the torment she says nearly killed her

Fourteen years and one highly contentious divorce. That was all it took for Julia Haart to finally get a good night's rest.

Up until quite recently, the 55-year-old star of the Netflix reality show My Unorthodox Life, which across two seasons chronicled her journey from being a member of an ultra-conservative Jewish community to becoming the CEO of a billion-dollar company, struggled to sleep more than four hours per night.

She used to wake up in a panic, drenched in sweat, heart beating out of her chest, convinced that a man was going to take everything from her: her money, her family, her freedom.

Then, one day, her recurring nightmare became a reality she said, and she finally came face to face with the man who she now believed had kept her up all those nights: her second husband.

'I always say that my first marriage was a prison,' she told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. 'But my second marriage was a torture chamber.'

For the last four and a half years, Haart has been trapped in a bitter legal battle with husband No. 2, Italian businessman Silvio Scaglia, over control of Elite World Group (EWG), one of the largest conglomerates of talent and modelling management agencies in the world, which they once co-owned.

In a slew of suits and countersuits, Scaglia accused Haart of misappropriating millions of dollars from EWG and stealing a company Bentley. She in return claimed in her filings that it was Scaglia who had misspent company funds, using over $20 million of company money as a personal slush fund to finance a lifestyle of private jets, super yachts and even a $342,000 heart-shaped diamond engagement ring for his fiancée Michelle Heinemann.

In 2024, a warrant, seen by the Daily Mail, was issued for Scaglia's arrest after he failed to pay Haart $300,000 in legal fees and didn't appear at an appointed court date. Scaglia, 67, is understood to be in Milan but according to the stringent terms of the warrant he will be arrested on sight – day or night – the moment he touches down on US soil.

Haart says she always wanted to keep the fight in the courts and that it was Scaglia who brought their battle to the tabloids, which were hungry for details surrounding their estimated $90 million divorce. Especially the more sordid ones that painted Haart as a power-hungry temptress hellbent on stealing her husband's money. 'To be accused of those things was excruciatingly painful, because it's antithetical to everything I stand for,' she said.

A particularly juicy Page Six story from 2022 accused Haart of being an 'entitled nightmare' who had made her former staffers cry in her quest to become the 'Jewish Kris Jenner.'

'I think it was very easy to paint me as seductress. That story sounds so familiar,' she said. 'The reality is that a woman coming out of nowhere, building a billion-dollar business, doing all the work, that's a harder story to tell because it's unusual. So, they used my uniqueness against me basically.'

The allegations, she claims, hurt her reputation and lost her friends. 'You have no idea what it feels like to walk into a room where people think you're a criminal when you've never done anything wrong,' she said. Yet she never questioned her approach. 'You can only hide the truth for so long. I knew I just had to hang on.'

In the end, her patience paid off. In January 2025, a New York judge awarded her full control of EWG, the $65 million Tribeca apartment the couple owned, which she has since sold, and nearly $10 million in cash. She received a 50 percent interest in EWG's parent company Freedom Holding, and power of attorney over Scaglia's 50 percent, which means she can make decisions on the company's behalf without his sign-off.

In an ironic twist of fate, Scaglia was found liable of the same misdeeds of which he had accused her without ever providing any proof.

On a steamy September morning right in the middle of New York Fashion Week, Haart is patiently waiting for a large hot cup of Starbucks coffee.

We're sitting in a windowless conference room at EWG's New York headquarters surrounded by a spread of French pastries that neither of us will touch during our two-hour chat. We have a lot to discuss, and she wants to make sure she's sufficiently caffeinated. After all, this is the first time she has felt comfortable sharing her side of the story that she claims threatened to ruin her.

'It was very painful,' she said. 'I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping. I mean, I went down to like a scary weight. Like it was not good. It nearly killed me.' She said there were times when she was so deep in debt she couldn't pay her lawyers.

Dressed in a powder blue Alexander McQueen power suit and sky-high matching Gucci platforms, the barely 5-foot Haart looks every bit the part of the ex-wife who got everything. But this story, she says, is bigger than just her.

When getting divorced, 'women get in this situation all the time,' Haart said. 'They get cut off from the money and then they have to settle. I really hope that this inspires people to keep fighting.'

To understand what she's been through, Haart thinks it's best to start at the beginning.

Haart first met Scaglia in 2015 when the eponymous shoe company she founded collaborated with La Perla, the renowned London-based lingerie brand he had acquired two years earlier. In 2016, she was named La Perla's Creative Director, and the two started dating. Three years later, he appointed Haart the CEO and Chief Creative officer of EWG. Three months into her tenure, they were married.

As she lays out the timeline, it's hard to ignore the fact that their romantic milestones seem to all coincide with major job promotions. Still, Haart maintains that Scaglia, who is 13 years her senior, never really loved her.

'I don't think anyone who actually has love in their heart could ever do what he did,' she said. 'He destroyed an innocent person who built him a billion-dollar business. That's the reality.'

She was his 'meal ticket,' she said. 'Everyone assumed, I married a rich guy when in reality, our entire marriage, I supported us.'

In 1999, Scaglia founded Fastweb, Italy's second biggest telecoms company, and quickly became one of the country's richest men. By 2010, he had a net worth of $1 billion, according to Forbes.

Haart admits, as embarrassing as it may sound, it was his brain that she fell in love with. 'I couldn't understand how he thought,' she said. In hindsight, she wishes she would have seen this for what it was: a red flag.

She chalks her naivete up to her ultra-orthodox Jewish upbringing in Monsey, New York, a hamlet in Rockland County, which has the largest Jewish population per capita of any county in America.

Two years prior to meeting Scaglia, Haart had fled from the Haredi community, which she describes as a form of fundamentalism in which women are second class citizens.

The Russian-born Haart had moved to Monsey with her parents when she was nine. By 19, she was married to Yosef Hendler, the father of her four children: Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam and Aron. She is still on good terms with her ex, which she finds rather ironic. 'Somehow the guy I was forced to marry was a much nicer person than the guy I chose.'

As she and her kids got older, she realized she wanted to do more with her life than Monsey would allow. But it took her eight years to actually leave.

In that time, she began reading about the outside world and started planning for a future where she would have to be financially independent, squirreling away cash from selling life insurance. Haart, who started sewing at 16, began designing in earnest, working on creating her own line of shoes.

During those years, she struggled with depression and thought about committing suicide, but worried about the stigma it would cause for her children. She said she tried to starve herself to death, dropping down to 73 pounds.

In 2012, at the age of 42, she officially left the community and everything she knew behind. She changed her last name to free herself from her past. (Haart is a nod to her maiden name, Leibov, which is similar to the Hebrew word for heart). A month later, in January 2013, she launched her shoe company and became the poster child for second chances.

Haart's story is so wild Hollywood would have a hard time scripting it. (Though, if they did, Haart is a dead ringer for Demi Moore). A reality show became her way of capturing this Cinderella story, which seemingly ended with her falling in love with a man who appreciated her for exactly who she was.

But her happily ever after with Scaglia wasn't to be. Months into their marriage, Haart says he became a different person.

She also started changing too, making herself smaller for him. 'My daughter literally said when I spoke to him, I spoke in a little girl's voice,' Haart said.

Nine months after they said 'I do,' Haart wanted to call it quits. She claims Scaglia begged her not to.

In 2022, Haart was granted a temporary restraining order against Scaglia, after filing a petition in which she alleged that he had become 'increasingly volatile, abusive and unhinged' after she filed for divorce.

The two eventually reached an agreement; they would separate romantically but maintain their business relationship.

In the season 2 premiere of My Unorthodox Life, which happened to be filming as the divorce drama started, Haart is so confident in this plan she tells a co-worker: 'It's literally the simplest divorce in history because there's no fighting. It's perfect.'

Soon after that conversation, Haart says she got a call from a banker who told her that Scaglia had taken $1.5 million out of the account. She says she reached out to Scaglia to get clarity on Friday and by Monday she was fired as CEO. 'That was a little drop in the bucket,' she said. 'They understood that I was going to start investigating.'

And she did. With the help of a forensic accountant, she unveiled a fuller picture of Scaglia's alleged misdeeds.

In pivotal testimony from Scaglia's former assistant turned whistleblower Tania Cohen, contained in a sworn and filed affidavit seen by the Daily Mail, Cohen stated that Scaglia was using corporate accounts for his personal 'piggy bank' to pay for yachts, jets and other luxury and expensive items. Cohen also stated that Haart had not taken a salary during her time as CEO.

In 2023, Cohen exclusively told the Daily Mail that Scaglia 'believed [Haart] could never withstand the cost of her attorneys and the lawsuits [that he filed]. He believed he would win by default.'

'It was like Operation Destroy Julia,' Haart said regarding Scaglia's mission to blame her for his misdeeds.

A second whistleblower, a high-ranking respected senior executive whose name has not been made public, but whose sworn and filed affidavit the Daily Mail has seen, also came forward echoing Cohen's claims of misappropriation of funds and painted a pattern of financial wrongdoings. They stated that Bank of America had terminated its account with SHS Asset Management, an investment firm led by Scaglia, over 'suspicious management of SHS.'

It was because of these women that Haart says she was able to win her case against her ex-husband. 'The thing is, I had the truth and the evidence on my side,' she said. 'They just had a group of guys speaking fancy.'

As it stands, Haart is the winner in all of this. But she isn't ready to declare victory.

While she may be sleeping more soundly – she's now getting a solid seven hours a night with the aid of meditation – in her opinion, justice will only be served when Scaglia, who fled the country years ago, is held accountable for his alleged wrongdoing. 'If these men aren't held accountable, then it's not a court order. It's a court suggestion.'

On September 22, the New York Supreme Court issued a bench warrant for Scaglia's arrest finding him in both criminal and civil contempt of the previous court order. The court directed the New York City Sheriff to take him into custody 'without further process.' Scaglia is believed to be in Milan after fleeing the country years ago.

In an exclusive statement to the Daily Mail, Scaglia wrote, in part: 'The divorce judgment entered against me is profoundly unjust and is under appeal.

'I categorically deny Ms. Haart's allegations about my conduct during our marriage. She made the same allegations in a Family Offense petition filed immediately after she was removed as CEO. She lost it, and the court found the account she and her daughter gave was not credible. She is now repeating in the press what she could not establish in court.'

In his decision, denying Haart's petition for a permanent restraining order, Judge Douglas E Hoffman indeed found that Haart had 'lied to the family court.'

Scaglia's statement continued: 'On the order of 22 September: it is not a criminal conviction. There has been no prosecution, no criminal court, and no jury. It is a contempt sanction imposed within a civil divorce case because I did not attend hearings in New York in person - after the same court had deprived me of the documents I needed to travel there. It rests on rulings already on appeal, and it will be appealed. I have never been convicted of a criminal offense.

'On her last point, we agree: nothing is won until there is a final judgment. This case is far from over.'

Haart has thought a lot about what she will do once this chapter of her life is over. She is working on new business ventures: an extra powerful vibrator, an AI tool that will 'make marketing more honest,' and a sodium-free pickle company called Haarties. She wants to write a memoir about her divorce and maybe even film another season of My Unorthodox Life that would focus on her new life in Miami. But not yet. 

'I need to end this chapter before I can start a new one,' she reiterated.

The only thing that she's completely sure of is that she will never get married again. To keep herself honest, she added a provision to her will that would allow her children to declare her mentally incapacitated and take her money should she contemplate marriage.

'Why in the world would I put a contract on love?' she said, noting that it's the only contract that doesn't have an end date. 'When these things started people lived until their 30s. So basically, they got married at 16, they were dead by 35, you know?'

The romantic in her wants to be with someone who will wake up every morning and choose her no matter what. But the entrepreneur in her is already thinking of ways to fix the entire institution.

'Marriage licenses should be like driver's licenses,' she said. 'They should expire after X amount of time, and then you should be able to decide whether you want to reissue it or not. How great would that be?'