Romeo Santos Sues Accounting Firm for Malpractice Over Financial Mistakes He Says Cost Him Millions

Latin superstar Romeo Santos is suing his longtime accounting and business management firm, claiming its “gross negligence” left him with unpaid tax bills and ultimately cost him millions of dollars in damages.

In a lawsuit obtained and first reported by Billboard , Santos (Anthony Santos) claims that BDO USA botched his financial affairs so badly that it amounted to professional malpractice — and that the company has since “rebuffed every overture” to find an “amicable solution” to the problem.

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Breakthrough Glenn A.

Baker, Australian Music Historian and Former Billboard Correspondent, Dies at 74 “For nearly seven years, Santos … entrusted his financial affairs to an accounting and business-management practice that sold itself as a dedicated entertainment-industry specialist,” writes his attorney, James Sammataro of the firm Pryor Cashman.

“What [BDO] delivered instead was gross negligence, year after year.” Santos isn’t the first music star to complain about BDO.

Back in 2022, Fat Joe filed a lawsuit claiming the firm and two of its employees stole millions of dollars in “brazen” fraud that has the “hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.” The case later settled in 2024 on confidential terms.

Santos broke out in the early 2000s as the lead singer of Aventura , a bachata group that’s put 13 songs in the top 10 of Billboard ’s Hot Latin Songs chart.

After launching a solo career in 2011, Santos has released seven hits that have topped the Hot Latin Songs chart, including 2014’s “Odio” collab with Drake and 2011’s “Promise” featuring Usher.

According to Wednesday’s (Aug.

12) lawsuit, Santos initially hired the firm Morrison Brown Argiz & Farra LLP in 2016; the company was later acquired by BDO in 2021.

He says he did so because the firm sold itself as an “entertainment-industry specialist” that could effectively manage the business affairs of “a global touring and recording artist and the multistate and international tax exposure that comes with it.” But he says BDO’s subsequent failures “spanned nearly every function it was retained to perform,” including basic functions like properly paying his taxes and filing returns.

He also says the firm botched his New York state taxes, filing an “incoherent” return that sparked a costly audit, and also failed to file for credits on foreign taxes already withheld from his royalties.

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