Todd Dean Net Worth: The Selfie Scammer Who Built an Empire Out of Other People’s Money
Let me just say this upfront: Todd Dean’s “net worth” might be the funniest financial story you’ve ever read about someone who was never technically a criminal.
He lived in a high-rise Nashville condo. He posted selfies like a man who’d figured life out. His LinkedIn said “proven visionary.” Women across multiple states thought he was a successful entrepreneur. And his actual income? Their wallets. For years.
This is the Todd Dean story. A guy who turned charm into a cash flow system. And the number that shows up when you Google “Todd Dean net worth” is basically a philosophical question.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Full Name | Michael Todd Dean |
| Born | Late July 1968, Billings, Montana |
| Parents | Melanie and Robert Dean |
| Education | Montana State University Billings, BBA (1992) |
| Known As | “The Selfie Scammer” |
| Occupation | Business consultant, entrepreneur, mental health advocate |
| Current Location | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Companies | Todd Dean & Co., Sanjara Wellness (bankrupt) |
| Bankruptcy Filed | December 2023 (Chapter 7, approved August 2024) |
| Creditors | Approximately 27 |
| Net Worth (2026) | Effectively $0 — possibly negative |
| Netflix Appearance | Love Con Revenge (Sept. 5, 2025, episodes 1–2) |
The LinkedIn Visionary With Empty Pockets
Here’s how most people meet Todd Dean in their heads. A good-looking guy in his fifties. Selfie from his downtown Nashville condo balcony. Polo shirt, bright teeth, something vague about wellness and entrepreneurship in the bio. “Proven visionary.” “CEO.” He looks like the kind of man who talks about “alignment” and “building something bigger.”
What he didn’t look like was someone who, on a creditors’ Zoom call in early 2024, would openly admit he had no job, no income, and hadn’t for years.
That’s the Todd Dean twist. The image and the reality were completely different people.
He grew up in Billings, Montana. Regular family, two kids, Robert and Melanie Dean raising them. Nothing scandalous in the early years. He graduated from Billings West High School in 1986, stuck around his hometown for college, got a business degree from Montana State University Billings in 1992. Nine years after that, he was selling life insurance for American Income Life. That’s the boring part of the story but it matters — because he was good at one thing very early: convincing people to buy into something they couldn’t quite see yet.
See also “Lean Ortiz Net Worth: The Illinois Teen Who Built a Million-Follower Empire from Outfit Videos“
The Entrepreneurial Pivot Nobody Talks About
In 2005, something shifted. Todd founded Keiretsu Forum Northwest, an angel investor network. On paper, legit. He positioned himself as someone who connected capital with opportunity. He ran that operation until September 2011.
That same period he was volunteering at SCORES Seattle, helping small businesses develop. He briefly ran a company called Brace Audio — some kind of guitar system brand — for about six months. Then he enrolled at the University of Washington, did some coursework, and picked up a role as a Sales Adjunct Professor. By late 2013 he was also teaching Entrepreneurial Management. He had the resume of someone going somewhere.
But Keiretsu closed. Brace Audio went nowhere. The professor gig ended. And somewhere in the mid-2010s, Todd Dean landed on a new business model. Himself.
Specifically: women who believed in him.
The Selfie System (And Why It Worked)
You have to understand the mechanics here, because this wasn’t just some dude asking his girlfriend to cover dinner once in a while. This was a system. Documented. Repeated. Across multiple states.
The opening move was the selfie flood. Ten, sometimes more, per day. Video messages too. Him in his car. Him in bed, thinking about you. Him riding scooters downtown, smiling. Women described feeling like they were the only thing on his mind. That’s the point. That’s called love bombing.
Then came the slow pivot. A small ask. Twenty-five bucks for poker. Fifty for dinner. He always promised to repay it. And at first, he did. Sometimes he’d return the money with a little extra, a gesture that screamed reliability. Women who’ve been through that pattern said it felt like proof — proof he was genuine.
Then the amounts grew. The paybacks stopped. And by the time they were asking questions, they were already in for thousands. The sums varied wildly — from a few hundred to nearly $50,000 depending on the woman. The story was always the same though: Sanjara Wellness needed funding, there was a deal coming, he was in “survival mode for some time,” he needed $3,500 for “absolute necessary needs.” His messages could break your heart if you didn’t know the pattern. If you did know? They’d make you furious.
Jill Schardein, a single mom from Bowling Green, Kentucky, met him on Facebook Dating. She eventually loaned him close to $25,000 connected to his wellness project. Karla Lawson in Seattle gave money. Donna McMillen in San Diego gave money. Karen Alpert from Long Island got a judgment against him for over $25,000 back in 2018 — money that grew to $44,283 with interest because he never paid a cent of it. Kristi, another woman who came forward, was out $8,000.
One woman who sued but didn’t go on camera claimed she’d given him $50,000. She also noted in her lawsuit that she believed at least 25 other people were in the same boat.
She wasn’t far off. When Netflix aired Love Con Revenge in September 2025, eight women appeared on camera to talk about what Todd Dean had done to them.
Sanjara Wellness: Dream, Deflection, or Both?
Here’s where it gets genuinely complicated. Sanjara Wellness wasn’t entirely fictional. Todd Dean established it in October 2017 as a mental health organization designed to help people dealing with anxiety, addictions, depression, trauma, and suicidal thoughts. The planned campus was in the hills of southern Kentucky. He had real estate. He apparently had real meetings with potential investors. He talked about it with the energy of someone who actually believed it.
But Sanjara never opened. Not a single session, not one patient served.
What it did do was give Todd a vehicle — a real-sounding, altruistic-sounding enterprise that he could reference when asking women for money. “I need this for Sanjara operating expenses.” His victims eventually figured out that “Sanjara operating expenses” often meant rent, food, and poker games.
One of them put it plainly on camera: she thought he was using the business as a front to finance his day-to-day life. And when Todd Dean admitted in bankruptcy proceedings that he had indeed lived off personal loans from women and other creditors while trying to launch Sanjara — up to $10,000 a month — that theory stopped looking like a theory.
WSMV4 Investigates, the Nashville TV team that first broke this story in June 2023, caught him at a Cool Springs bar playing poker on the same day he’d skipped a court date. He wasn’t hiding. He just… wasn’t showing up for court. The station’s reporter tried to interview him. Todd grabbed the microphone and told them to check their facts.
To this day, he’s never been criminally charged.
The Bankruptcy That Told the Whole Story
December 2023. Todd Dean filed for personal Chapter 7 bankruptcy. That same month, Sanjara Wellness LLC followed with its own filing. Both were approved in 2024.
During the bankruptcy process, a creditor Zoom call revealed everything you needed to know. Todd confirmed on that call that he had zero income and zero employment. The bankruptcy trustee announced they were actively searching for any assets that could be used to repay the people he owed money.
There were approximately 27 creditors listed. The Sanjara property in Kentucky had to be sold. But courts determined the land proceeds couldn’t go toward personal debts because it was held under the LLC — not Todd personally. So creditors got next to nothing.
One of his victims, Jill Schardein, told cameras she didn’t expect to ever see her money again.
A Nashville judge had already ordered Todd to repay her around $30,727. He hadn’t. He filed for bankruptcy instead. The same judge who gave Karen Alpert her 2018 ruling watched that judgment balloon to over $44,000 in unpaid interest. Still uncollected.
This is what “Todd Dean net worth” actually means. Legally: negative. Practically: a number that exists on paper inside a bankruptcy court filing, surrounded by the names of people he never paid back.
The Netflix Moment Nobody Saw Coming
Then Love Con Revenge hit Netflix on September 5, 2025.
The docuseries — hosted by Cecilie Fjellhøy (who you might recognize from The Tinder Swindler) and private investigator Brianne Joseph — opened with Todd Dean’s story across its first two episodes. They used footage from WSMV4’s original investigations. They featured the women who’d gone public. And in the weeks after it dropped, the show climbed to the number two spot on Netflix’s most-watched list.
Todd Dean — bankrupt, never criminally charged, still in Nashville — suddenly had a global audience.
He didn’t appear on the show. He’s made no public statement about it. His LinkedIn still describes him as someone with “deep expertise in wealth creation.” No, really. Check the irony on that one.
According to people who follow his movements, he continues to live in Nashville, still calls himself the Founder-CEO of Todd Dean & Co., and has reportedly shifted some of his energy toward working with young people struggling with anxiety, depression, and PTSD — through mental health advocacy. He does podcast appearances. He talks about entrepreneurship and wellness. He’s close to his son, Sean Dean.
In 2024 he traveled to Seattle to pay respects when his mentor, John Meisenbach, passed away.
Life, somehow, continues.
So What Is Todd Dean’s Net Worth, Actually?
Zero. Less than zero, technically.
He declared personal bankruptcy. His business went bankrupt. He admitted under oath he had no job and no income. Courts found assets that couldn’t even legally be redirected toward what he owed. The women who sued him hold judgments that remain almost entirely unpaid.
There’s no hidden fortune. No offshore account (that anyone’s found). No windfall from the Netflix appearance — the show featured documentary footage, not a deal with him directly.
What Todd Dean had, for years, was the appearance of wealth. A condo, a LinkedIn profile, a wellness campus dream, a whole story. That appearance was enough to extract money from people who trusted him. The actual balance sheet? Catastrophically empty.
If you’re searching for his net worth because you want to know how much a romance scammer made off it — the answer is uncomfortable. He made enough to live on for years. The women paid for his dinners, his poker games, his rent. By his own admission, he was pulling in up to $10,000 a month in “loans” from romantic partners and creditors combined. None of it invested, none of it growing. All of it spent. Then he filed for bankruptcy and started over.
That’s the Todd Dean financial empire. Built on borrowed money from people who cared about him. Collapsed without a criminal charge to show for it.
Final Thoughts
Here’s my honest opinion and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
The most unsettling thing about the Todd Dean story isn’t that he took money from women. It’s that the system never stopped him. Not the courts. Not the bankruptcy process. Not public exposure. He skipped court hearings and went to play poker instead. He was found by a TV news crew doing it. He filed for bankruptcy when the judgments piled up. And then he just… kept going. Still in Nashville. Still calling himself a CEO.
Eight women talked to Netflix cameras about what he did to them. They gave up their privacy to make sure the story was told. And the man they’re talking about continues to describe himself professionally as an expert in wealth creation.
There’s something deeply broken in a legal framework that lets that happen. Judgments without enforcement are just paper. Bankruptcy as a reset button for serial financial predators is a real problem. And the absence of criminal charges — when a man admits in court he lived off other people’s money for years — raises questions that nobody’s fully answered yet.
The victims don’t have their money back. They probably won’t get it.
Todd Dean, as of late 2026, is 58 years old, still breathing Nashville air, still showing up for podcasts, and still claiming a net worth that by any honest measure doesn’t exist.
FAQs
1. What is Todd Dean’s net worth in 2026?
Effectively zero. He filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December 2023, which was approved in August 2024. He confirmed in a creditors’ Zoom call that he had no job and no income. His net worth is negative when debts to approximately 27 creditors are factored in.
2. Who is Todd Dean and why is he famous?
Todd Dean is a Nashville-based man who became nationally known after multiple women accused him of romancing them and borrowing large sums of money that he never repaid. He earned the nickname “the Selfie Scammer” and was featured on Netflix’s Love Con Revenge in September 2025.
3. Was Todd Dean ever arrested or charged with a crime?
No. Despite multiple civil lawsuits and court judgments against him, Todd Dean has never faced criminal charges for any of his alleged financial conduct.
4. How much money did Todd Dean allegedly take from women?
The amounts varied by individual. Karen Alpert’s judgment exceeded $44,000. Jill Schardein was owed over $30,000. One unnamed woman loaned him $50,000. Others lost amounts ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands. On the Netflix show, disclosed figures included $46,000 (Karen), $12,000 (Bridget), and $8,000 (Kristi), among others.
5. What was Sanjara Wellness?
Sanjara Wellness was a mental health center that Todd Dean claimed he was building in southern Kentucky. He founded the LLC in October 2017. The campus was designed to serve people dealing with anxiety, addiction, depression, and trauma. It never opened. Both Sanjara Wellness LLC and its operating entity filed for bankruptcy in late 2023.
6. What is Love Con Revenge and how does Todd Dean fit in?
Love Con Revenge is a Netflix docuseries that premiered on September 5, 2025, hosted by Cecilie Fjellhøy and private investigator Brianne Joseph. Todd Dean’s story is covered across the first two episodes, using investigative footage from Nashville TV station WSMV4. The show reached the number two spot on Netflix’s most-watched list.
7. Did Todd Dean appear in Love Con Revenge?
No. He declined to participate in the documentary and has not made any public statement about it.
8. Where is Todd Dean living now?
As of late 2026, Todd Dean still resides in Nashville, Tennessee. He continues to operate Todd Dean & Co., his business consultancy, and has reportedly been doing youth mental health advocacy work.
9. Did the women who sued Todd Dean ever get their money back?
For the most part, no. Several had court judgments in their favor, but Todd filed for bankruptcy, and the liquidation of his assets — including the Sanjara Wellness property — did not meaningfully compensate creditors because the property was held in an LLC name, not personally.
10. What was Todd Dean’s career before the scandal?
He worked in life insurance for nine years after college, then founded an angel investor network (Keiretsu Forum Northwest, 2005–2011), briefly ran a guitar brand (Brace Audio), and worked as an adjunct business professor at the University of Washington. He later started Todd Dean & Co. as a business consultancy and launched the Sanjara Wellness project in 2017.
11. How did Todd Dean get the “Selfie Scammer” nickname?
The women he dated reported receiving a constant stream of selfies and short video messages — sometimes ten or more per day. This was part of a love-bombing pattern. When the story broke, the nickname stuck.
12. Is Todd Dean still active on social media or podcasts?
Yes, reportedly. His LinkedIn remained active post-bankruptcy, still identifying him as someone with expertise in wealth creation. He has appeared in podcasts discussing entrepreneurship and mental health advocacy.
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