Jamie Lynn Sigler's First Marriage Was Just As Rocky As A Sopranos Script

In a new memoir, former "The Sopranos" star Jamie Lynn Sigler revealed the heartbreaking truth about her first marriage. Before she tied the knot with current husband Cutter Dykstra, Sigler was married to Abraxas "AJ" Discala from 2003 to 2005, during her run on the hit HBO series. As she detailed in her book, "And So It Is...: A Memoir of Acceptance and Hope," Discala had been shady on multiple fronts, which came to light when she started deep-diving into her finances at the tail-end of their relationship. As the actor was reaching the dissolution of her marriage, she hired a lawyer and a forensic accountant to get a detailed account of her finances. That's when Sigler discovered Discala had been pulling off a mobster move by taking money for himself. 

"There are hundreds of thousands of dollars missing," her accountant revealed (via InTouch). According to Sigler, when she was paid for her work on "The Sopranos," it first went into her business account. Then a sum would be transferred to a personal account she shared with Discala. Apparently, he repeatedly would wait "a week or so" before skimming from the top and transferring some of that money into his own account.

Besides the egregious theft, the former "The Sopranos" cast member had other dark secrets from her marriage to Discala. "I understood I was not going to survive much longer if I stayed in that marriage," she told Us Weekly in April. "I think our relationship was really toxic and complicated," Sigler added. The wildest part of the story, though, is that what Discala took from Sigler was peanuts compared to the crimes he got busted for years after the two divorced.

Almost a decade after Jamie Lynn Sigler and Abraxas "AJ" Discala called it quits, he made headlines when he got arrested. In July 2014, Discala was charged with being part of a dump-and-pump stock scheme as CEO of his financial company, the Rowayton-based OmniView Capital. He was implicated with other members of his company for allegedly inflating the price of low-value stocks, and then selling those stocks off to unsuspecting clients before the value took a nosedive. Authorities believed Discala and his cohorts made $300 million off their scheme. At the time of his arrest, his attorney, Joseph Tacopina, came to his client's defense. "Anyone who knows [Discala] is shocked by the accusations. I want to point out these are only accusations," the lawyer told CNBC. 

Obviously Sigler would not be counted among those "shocked" to hear her ex-husband had defrauded people out of millions. A week after his arrest, Discala — out on $2 million bond — was instructed to remain in his home. He fought to be allowed to leave for business meetings, but that request was shot down. 

Several years later, after Sigler moved on and had a second child with Cutter Dykstra, her first husband's shady ways fully caught up with him. By December 2021, Discala was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in prison, and was ordered to pay nearly $2.5 million in fines. "With today's sentence, Discala has been held accountable for his crimes and the harm he caused to investors," US attorney Breon Peace said of the verdict, per Page Six. Discala may not have officially been "held accountable" for stealing from Sigler, but karma certainly caught up with him.