Grunge king Kurt robbed of $40m – years after his death

Published on Saturday 8 March 2008 18:39

HE LIVED a life beset by tragedy and rock and roll excess, and now his misfortune has continued more than a decade after his death.

Identity fraudsters have stolen almost 40m from the estate of the late rock star, Kurt Cobain, who shot himself 14 years ago.

They used the former Nirvana frontman's social security number to plunder his accounts.

Last night the singer's widow, Courtney Love, said she had known for a while that thieves were helping themselves to the estate but no one believed her.

Investigators in the United States say the thieves took 36m in cash from a trust fund set up for Cobain's daughter, Frances Bean, who is 14 years old. The gang is understood to have used Cobain's personal details to take out credit cards and write cheques in Love's name.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that the gang stole a further 1.6m to buy luxury cars and a mansion.

Love says she knows who is behind the frauds and has brought in a team of private investigators and forensic accountants to track them down. She said: "Taking a child's money and future is a really horrible thing."

Nirvana, best known for hits such as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', and 'Come As You Are', still sell 62 million albums each year, the royalties boosting Cobain's personal estate by around 21m.

The 27-year-old shot himself in April 1994 and, in doing so, made Love the owner of 98% of Nirvana's catalogue. She said her concerns about her late husband's accounts may have gone unheeded because she was struggling with drug problems at the time.

She added: "I knew it had been going on since when I went cuckoo – bananas – in 2003. It was fraud after fraud.

"But no one believed me until now. I did a check on my deceased husband's social security number and he has a house in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He bought it last year.

"I would like to know how. He should probably get his ass back home if that is the case."

Cobain grew up in a dysfunctional home in the tiny Washington logging town of Aberdeen, near Seattle.

In his teenage years the scrawny, withdrawn youth formed Nirvana as an outlet for his frustrations, and when 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' emerged as an anthem for a disaffected generation he became one of the biggest rock stars on the planet. His surly good looks helped him became the poster boy for grunge, a punk-metal hybrid, and youngsters around the globe aped his flannel-shirt-clad, long-haired, defiantly insouciant demeanour.

But Cobain's depression and drug addiction spiralled out of control and he took his own life.

British music expert and author Barney Hoskyns believes Cobain was the most influential American musician since Bob Dylan. "Even now, when you watch young boys spilling out of school, there's always one black T-shirt that spells out, in bright yellow letters, 'Nirvana'," he said.

"These middle-class urchins probably couldn't tell you what Nirvana means. But for them, Kurt Cobain is sort of what Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon or Bob Marley are to their fathers: an icon, a martyr, a patron saint."