Darryl McCauley didn't just steal from his famous half-brother—he turned a kitchen pantry into a vault. McCauley, who served as Dane Cook's business manager, wrapped stolen cash in plastic and stuffed it inside pasta sauce containers, according to the documentary "Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story," which premieres on demand Sept. 29.
McCauley was charged in 2008 with larceny, embezzlement and related offenses after investigators determined he had taken at least $12 million from Cook's accounts. His wife Erika faced charges alongside him. Both entered guilty pleas, and a court ordered full restitution of the $12 million.
McCauley served a six-year prison sentence. After his release, he disappeared.
The withdrawals began incrementally. McCauley pulled $20,000 at a time, then $50,000, then amounts as large as $100,000—all from Cook's accounts without the comedian's knowledge. Cook says in the documentary trailer that he began sensing something wrong before he could name it. "I was starting to feel something that I couldn't really identify," Cook says.
Beyond the cash in the pantry, McCauley kept additional stolen funds locked in a safe. The pasta sauce concealment was one layer of a broader scheme to disperse and hide the money across multiple locations.
Cook believes the confirmed $12 million figure understates the total theft. "I do believe that there's money out there," he says in the trailer. "I believe there's people that know more." Investigators at the time set $12 million as the floor of what they could document, not necessarily the ceiling.
The documentary traces the relationship between the two men back to their shared ambition. Both Cook and McCauley grew up wanting careers in stand-up comedy. McCauley became a corrections officer instead, while Cook became one of the top-selling comics of the 2000s.
The financial arrangement that made the theft possible was straightforward: McCauley controlled Cook's money as his business manager, giving him direct access to accounts with minimal oversight. That structure allowed withdrawals to accumulate for years before Cook noticed.
