The biggest victim of the National Football League’s drug-testing policy so far is Beverly Hills socialite Nikki Haskell, who declared bankruptcy this week and blames it on the fact that she’s being sued by New Orleans Saints offensive guard Jamar Nesbit.
He’s one of six NFL players who tested positive in 2007 for bumetanide — a powerful diuretic used to mask anabolic steroids — after taking Haskell’s Star Caps diet pills. Nesbit was suspended for four games, and then sued Haskell for $750,000 in lost wages and damages.
The five other players — Pat and Kevin Williams of the Minnesota Vikings, and Deuce McAlliser, Charles Grant and Will Smith of the Saints — sued the NFL, and their suspensions are still pending.
“I am devastated,” Haskell told Page Six. “We tried to settle. It didn’t happen. I’ve had this hanging over my head for a year and a half. I’ve thought of nothing else. It’s really taken a toll on me.”
Haskell, a regular in St. Tropez and a bridesmaid at Ivana Trump‘s last wedding, was a stockbroker at Drexel Burnham, and the host of “The Nikki Haskell Show” on cable TV for eight years, before she became the “Diet Queen to the Stars” 25 years ago.
Star Caps were marketed to women of a certain age as “a natural blend of papaya and garlic from the higher Andes of Peru.” Haskell, who claims she had no idea her product contained bumetanide, also said she’s mystified how the NFL players discovered it.
“What does a 400-pound football player want with Star Caps?” Haskell mused to us two years ago when we first reported that she’d taken the pills off the market. “We tested for nicotine, caffeine, amphetamines . . . we never tested for bumetanide because we never heard of it.”
Haskell, who’s now out of business, told us yesterday, “It’s a new year. I have to get on with my life.”