Aaron Phypers Ordered to Pay Widower $160K Over Business Dispute Amid Denise Richards Divorce Battle
Aaron Phypers Ordered to Pay Widower $160K Over Business Dispute Amid Denise Richards Divorce Battle
Justin Harp and Whitney VasquezFri, March 27, 2026 at 10:05 PM UTC
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Leon Bennett/Getty Images for A+E Networks
Denise Richards’ estranged husband, Aaron Phypers, has been ordered to pay a widower over $160K over a business dispute.
Us Weekly has obtained a default judgment signed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, ordering Phypers, 53, to pay $160,483.97 to Rupert Perry. The legal case arose over Perry and his late wife, Elina Katsioula-Beall, seeking a refund for stem cell treatments at Phypers’ now-closed wellness center prior to her 2024 death from cancer. (TMZ was first to report the news.)
The default judgment against Phypers breaks down to $126,000 in damages, $33,001.12 in interest and $1,482.85 for additional costs.
Us has reached out to Phypers’ representative for comment.
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Last November, Perry asked a Los Angeles Superior Court to award him a default judgment of $148,652 — $126,000 for a medical treatment refund and $21,000 in interest and other fees — because Phypers had yet to respond to his lawsuit. Perry previously placed advertisements in The Malibu Times on June 19, June 26, July 3 and July 10, 2025, to notify Phypers that he was being sued.
Us reported in July 2025 that Perry took legal action against Phypers for fraud and breach of contract accusations, in a Los Angeles Superior Court over payments that his late-wife, award-winning art director Katsioula-Beall, allegedly made to Phypers’ now-closed Quantum 360 Club.
Perry said Katsioula-Beall was diagnosed with sarcoma cancer in 2019 and was considering alternative treatments when Phypers recommended a stem cell procedure that he said would “cure or at least ameliorate” her illness.
“[Phypers] claimed that the treatment had a 98 percent success rate and he was so confident in it that, if it did not work, he would refund to [Katsioula-Beall] and [Perry] fifty percent (of the money they [paid] to him for the treatment,” Perry’s lawyers wrote.
Perry said Katsioula-Beall underwent the stem cell treatments from July 2023 to September 2023, costing a total of $126,000. However, Perry alleged that his late wife had an MRI in December 2023 that showed her tumors actually grew 25 percent in three months.
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Aaron Phypers and Denise Richards in June 2023. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Race to Era
The lawsuit stated that Katsioula-Beall asked for a refund of $63,000 — half of her initial payment — but allegedly never received it. She died on May 21, 2024.
“On March 29, 2024, as she was dying from cancer, [Katsioula-Beall] sent another email to [Phypers] along with an invoice for $63,000 and a request for payment in a timely manner. [Phypers] again ignored her request and did not respond,” Perry alleged.
Perry contended that “[Phypers’] aforementioned misconduct was intentional, willful, and done for the purpose of depriving Plaintiff of property and/or legal rights or otherwise causing injury.”
“[The] despicable conduct subjected [Katsioula-Beall’s estate] to cruel and unjust hardship in conscious disregard of his rights,” Perry told the court.
At the time, a source close to Phypers denied that he was responsible for the money owed, insisting that he was simply a middleman and that the CEO of the company performing the treatments actually offered a refund.
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This legal setback comes amid Phypers’ ongoing divorce from Richards, 55. He filed for divorce in July 2025, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the cause of the split.
The former couple have since been involved in a messy divorce battle, which saw them evicted from their Calabasas, California, home in December 2025 for allegedly failing to pay over $84,000 in rent.
Us reported in February that Phypers scored a legal victory over Richards when she was ordered to pay him $5,000 each month in temporary spousal support, plus cover $25,000 for his attorneys’ fees and contribute $5,000 to hire a forensic accountant.
Prior to his relationship with Richards, Phypers was previously married to actress Nicollette Sheridan from December 2015 to June 2016.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
