Consumer Confidential: The Getty oil fortune, a family scandal and an alleged multimillion-dollar tax scam

For all that we may be getting fed up with the hijinks of billionaires trying to use their fortunes to get their way in business and government, the lifestyles of the rich and famous still have the power to fascinate and shock.

Consider a lawsuit filed last month in Brooklyn Federal Court by Marlena Sonn, who describes herself as an investment advisor to two of the three daughters of Gordon P. Getty, the heir to the late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.

Sonn asserts that she helped the Getty offspring reposition their investment portfolios to stress "socially responsible" ventures, in part to help them make "reparations ... for the fact that the origin of their tremendous wealth was inextricably intertwined" with climate change and the despoliation of the Amazon Basin.

Her advice, she says, produced great financial success for the clients' trusts, raising the value of a key trust to more than $1 billion from $600 million in the space of a few years.

But it all came apart, she says, when she started questioning the