Judge orders V. Stiviano to return $2.6 million back to Donald Sterling’s wife: Report

A Los Angeles judge ruled that the wife of the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is owed $2.6 million by V. Stiviano — the woman who was at the center of Sterling's NBA scandal which forced the ex-owner out of the league.

On Tuesday, Judge Richard Fruin Jr. awarded Shelly Sterling most of the nearly $3 million she had sought in a lawsuit against the young beauty her husband had showered with gifts.

Sterling had claimed that money used to buy V. Stiviano a house, luxury cars and stocks was her community property.

"Shelly is thrilled with the decision," attorney Pierce O'Donnell said. "This is certainly a victory for the Sterling family whose funds were dissipated by Donald to lavish millions of dollars of gifts on a conniving mistress."

Stiviano’s lawyer had argued the gifts were made when Donald and Shelly Sterling were separated and that Shelly Sterling couldn’t seek them from a third party.

The ruling comes nearly a year after Stiviano’s recording of Donald Sterling making racially offensive remarks forced him to sell the NBA team.

Shelly Sterling’s lawyers used other recordings to show he bought Stiviano a house, a $240,000 Ferrari and treated her to extravagant shopping sprees.

In the recordings on Stiviano’s iPhone, she and the 80-year-old billionaire are heard discussing how to shield the gifts from his wife.

“The truth is that everything that I have, you’ve given me from your heart without me begging or asking or throwing myself all over you,” Stiviano said in a clip played in court.

During the course of their 2 1/2 years together, Sterling gave her the Ferrari, a Bentley and a Range Rover, and paid the bulk of a $1.8 million duplex.

Sterling testified that he paid for the entire house, though Stiviano said she had contributed an unknown amount of money given to her in small bills by family members that she saved in a bedroom drawer.

Donald Sterling said Stiviano hadn’t contributed “50 cents” to the house and, noting that Stiviano is part black and Hispanic, said she illegally got her name inserted into escrow documents by befriending Hispanic bank and escrow employees.

Shelly Sterling filed the suit against Stiviano about a month before the recording of Donald Sterling telling Stiviano not to associate with black people created an uproar and led the NBA to ban him for life and fine him $2.5 million.