Asked directly whether the rumours about her parents mishandling her money were true, Charli D'Amelio answered flatly. 'No, they're not true', she said. 'I wouldn't say that they stole my money'. Then came a long pause, followed by a sentence that has drawn attention since the interview was published on Wednesday, 21 October. 'I think we did a lot of things as a family', she said carefully.
It is the first time she has addressed the claims directly. D'Amelio is 22 and was estimated to have earned $18 million over 12 months. After building her career alongside her family from a young age, she is now taking greater control of her finances and professional decisions. She has cut ties with the family's Be Happy Snacks business, while her parents, Marc and Heidi, remain involved in the brand. The family did not respond to requests for comment.
What She Did Say About the Money
The denial is the headline. The more revealing answers came earlier in the same conversation.
'There are not a lot of rules and regulations when it comes to people who do what I do', she said. 'I didn't start learning about and getting involved in my financials until I was about 21. I'm very fortunate to be able to be living the life that I am, but I've also been working nonstop since I was 15, so I should have stuff to show for it'.
She was blunter about the adults around her in general. 'I was the youngest in every room I was in', she said. 'I was surrounded by people who were the best in the business, so you trust because that's all you have—these people who are supposed to be guiding and helping you. But people are selfish, and that's the sad reality'.
D'Amelio did not name anyone in those remarks or accuse her parents of taking her money. Her comments about her early career must be read alongside her explicit denial of the allegations.
Twenty-Three Binders
The rumours surfaced in May, when a celebrity gossip account posted unverified claims alleging that millions of dollars had been transferred from accounts associated with D'Amelio's earnings. No publicly available evidence has substantiated the allegations.
Her father, Marc, denied the claims in May, saying the family's work together had never been about money.
The family's reality series, The D'Amelio Show, offered a glimpse of the workload she faced as a teenager. In the pilot, their manager presents 23 binders containing proposals for business ventures. Her mother asks where the binder is for projects that would allow her daughter to be a child.
'I still have those binders,' D'Amelio said. 'Twenty-three major projects in a year were agreed to. I had just turned 16.'
She had dropped out of school by then and signed with her agency as part of a family package. Looking back, she described herself as 'a child, which I didn't really get the significance of at the time, but I can see it very clearly now'.
The Rules Arrived Late
Her experience raises a broader question about the financial safeguards available to young people earning money through online content. What protection does a teenager have when the adults managing her career are also her parents? California's Coogan Law traditionally required 15% of a child performer's gross earnings to be placed in a protected trust until adulthood. Its original framework did not cover all forms of online content creation.
That changed in 2024, when California enacted two separate measures that took effect in 2025. Assembly Bill 1880 extended Coogan Law protections to eligible minors working as online content creators. Senate Bill 764 introduced separate trust-account requirements for qualifying family-vlogging content. Under the latter law, 65% of the compensation attributable to a child's participation must be set aside according to a statutory formula when the requirements are met.
The protections arrived years after D'Amelio began building her online career. They provide context for the wider debate about child creators' earnings, but they do not establish whether any money was mishandled in her case.
D'Amelio is now making more decisions about her own career. She parted ways with her longtime manager in December 2025 and has not appointed a replacement. 'I like it. I'm in charge', she said. 'Now I say what I'm doing and not doing'.
She has also expressed gratitude for the role her family played in her rise to fame. 'I don't know what doing this without them would have looked like', she said. 'I don't know if I would have had this life'.
