Dane Cook Says Brother’s $12 Million Betrayal Left Him With ‘Scarlet Letter of Humiliation’

Dane Cook is reflecting on his brother's $12 million betrayal.

Talking to Fox News Digital, Cook said that the betrayal not only devastated him financially but also impacted his mental health.

He said, “It was the scarlet letter of humiliation that I felt like he branded on me.”

For those unversed, Cook discovered that he was essentially broke after finding success on stage and screen, and during one of the peaks of his career - all because of his older half-brother, Darryl McCauley.

This is because McCauley, who served as the actor's business manager, reportedly ran away with a fraction of his half-brother's fortune.

In 2008, when he was arrested, investigators found out that he hadn't stolen just $3 million of his brother's money, but was actually on the run for a lot more.

Apparently, he had taken nearly $12 million from Cook's money over the course of his working relationship with his brother by hiding it in spaghetti sauce jars.

McCauley pleaded guilty in 2010 to multiple counts of larceny, forgery and embezzlement.

His wife, Erika, also pleaded guilty to larceny charges. The two were also ordered to pay restitution, though the comedian waived this fee against her for her participation in his documentary, Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story.

Reflecting on it, Cook said, “It was like, forget about all the, you know, the criminal, all of it. It’s like, he knew I was the kid on the playground with the terrible cystic acne who hated myself and … self-loathing, and like, a lot of stuff that I guess as adults we feel like it’s woe is me, but it was very real to me, and it was hard.”

During the interview, Cook noted that the health and wellness aspect of his entire career was “trying to regulate that and share not only through my comedy, but the back channels of MySpace or the communication of, like, 'I’m just like you, but I just did it.'”

He said, “That’s happening back channel. Publicly, I’m the belle of the ball, all the cool stuff that’s happening there, but he knew, only he knew that I’d come home every day after school with panic attacks and dreading the next day, having to go to school because I was just so scared of people.”

“I was so scared to be around other kids,” he added.

“It’s like, the money can come and go, and fame can come and go, and that’s life. There’s so many things that are out of your control,” Cook said, before adding, “But that part that he knew about me was, like, man, he let that happen to me.”

At the same time, he added, “I’m the son of George Cook, and he forgot that I am my father’s son. We are conditioned, I think, the DNA of the Cook family is like, we put wins in the win column, and we take our losses, and we reconfigure.”

“We don’t sit in them and go, ‘Oh, the engine broke,’ and tell people we used to have a good engine. That’s just not, that’s not me. That’s not us,” the 54-year-old said.