This Princess Shoplifted $20M Worth Of Stuff

Everyone knows being rich and famous rules: You get free stuff constantly, and what you don't get free, you cravenly take by force. But, your Winonas and Lindsay Lohans are nothing compared to Saudi Princess Maha bint Mohammed bin Ahmad al-Sudairi, whose shoplifting and bill-skipping total in the many millions of dollars. As Vanity Fair reports in its April issue, Princess Maha seems to leave a trail of scandal and past-due invoices wherever she goes. In 2012, she racked up a $7-million hotel balance at Paris' Shangri-La Hotel — that includes five months' lodging, for her and her 60-deep entourage (should a princess ever be without her royal callus-shaver?). She split in the middle of the night, leaving the bill unpaid. During another extended stay in Paris in 2009, the princess indulged herself with an epic $20-million shopping spree at some of the city's priciest boutiques. But, in lieu of payment at each store, a member of the princess' entourage presented bewildered staff with a fancy document that promised "Payment to follow" (apparently, only plebes pay cash or credit). Checks were indeed sent to stores for several months, but eventually stopped arriving, leaving merchants on the hook for a lot of money — $100,000 at a lingerie store; $125,000 for "leisurewear." One store owner camped out in the lobby of the Georges V Hotel, where the princess was then staying, in hopes of extracting payment, before finally filing a civil suit. Click over to Vanity Fair for the truly odd tale of this princess gone wild, including copious lawsuits, the Saudi royal family's attempts to allay the scandal by confining her to her palace (least effective grounding, ever), and why underneath it all, the princess is really just a "lost soul" (awww). There's also a truly stunning pic of her storage locker, stocked floor-to-ceiling with designer luggage. She may only be a princess, but in our hearts, she's the queen of pathological entitlement. (Vanity Fair)