Actor Sylvester Stallone paid his late half-sister Toni-Ann Filiti a lot of money for many years based on allegations that he abused her. According to the New York Post on Jan. 24, Stallone’s mom Jacqueline has come forward and said “it was nothing more than a shakedown.”
Twenty-six years ago, Sylvester Stallone agreed to give Toni-Ann $2 million plus $16,666.66 per month for life, plus a trust with $50,000 per year for her psychiatric and medical expenses. According to the legal papers, the payments were restitution for “personal injury, including physical injury” she allegedly suffered at the hands of Sly Stallone. To this day, Stallone has “vigorously denied and continues to deny and dispute all claims of wrongdoing."
Toni-Ann threatened a lawsuit, but Sly settled before it was filed. Toni-Ann Filiti died in August last year from lung cancer. She was 48.
Now Jacqueline Stallone, mother of Sly and Toni-Ann, has come forward to speak about the lawsuit and the payments to the daughter she described as “a pill-popping drug addict desperate for cash.”
“This was nothing more than a shakedown,” Jacqueline said yesterday. “Toni-Ann was on 65 Oxycontin pills a day, and she threatened Sylvester. A drug addict will do anything. When Sylvester became famous, she didn’t have to hook. He was trying to help her. He caved in.”
She added of the allegations, “There were too many conflicting stories . . . At the time [in 1987] he was very hot, and his lawyers said, ‘Give her something just to shut her up.’ ”
Tony-Ann Filiti’s 19-year-old son Edd is on the other side of the argument. He claims his mother told him of the abuse in a Florida hospital bed last year. “They’ve made my mother out to be the black sheep.”
A representative for Sylvester Stallone would only comment that, “Unfortunately, celebrities, politicians and athletes frequently find themselves the targets of blackmail efforts by family members and associates who fabricate claims in order to extort payments from them.”
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