Spectacular downfall of heir to Applebee’s fortune as feud over $20m inheritance explodes: After very public shaming, all his sordid marriage secrets come to light… and second wife gives stunning defense of now-jailed husband

Published: 16:18 EDT, 19 October 2026 | Updated: 16:32 EDT, 19 October 2026

At his height in 2001, Allen Musikantow owned and operated around 480 Applebee’s restaurants across 23 states, making him one of the biggest and wealthiest family franchise operators in the country.

When Musikantow decided to sell the firm, Apple American Group, his son, Evan, claimed he played a major role in the company’s success, and demanded a 20 percent share of the proceeds – worth around $20 million.

Evan’s crumbling first marriage and expensive downward spiral into alcohol, drugs and gambling torpedoed his efforts to get any of his father’s fortune, court filings obtained by the Daily Mail show.

Twenty-five years later, Evan, now 60, is in prison facing over $1 million in restitution for failing to support his two children from his first marriage, and claims he has been unfairly deemed ‘public enemy No. 1,’ comparing himself to Al Capone in a local news interview.

But his second wife remains convinced that her husband is owed millions by his estranged father and, despite a tumultuous marriage, is standing by him.

‘He never got what was owed to him after the sale,’ Nicole Zuber told the Daily Mail on Wednesday.

‘He’s been through a lot, and it doesn’t matter what he does but it’s always getting worse.’

Evan Musikantow married Nicole Zuber (pictured) in 2009 after meeting in Beverly Hills (source: Nicole Zuber)

Evan Musikantow, now 60, claimed to have played a major role in expanding his father’s company (source: LinkedIn/Evan Musikantow)

Born into a privileged Chicago family, Evan Musikantow had a difficult relationship with his father from a young age.

Allen Musikantow, now 86, was domineering and abusive, Evan alleged in court filings.

His parents divorced when he was five and Evan moved to Arizona with his mother Janet. Although Janet struggled financially, she always managed to provide for him, he would later say.

Zuber told the Daily Mail that Evan remained frightened of his father well into adulthood.

‘Evan was terrified of his father,’ she said. Once, at an Applebee’s conference in front of dozens of staff, Allen told his son that he wished he had never had children, Zuber alleged.

Allen and his lawyers did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.

Evan married his first wife, Dawn Musikantow, on July 15, 1995, and had two children. The family lived in a penthouse on North Astor Street in Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood while Evan worked for his father, divorce court records claim.

Divorce records suggest the family enjoyed luxury vacations and memberships to private clubs. The kids were chauffeured to a $50,000 a year private school, and the family employed a maid and nanny.

Evan married his first wife, Dawn (pictured), on July 15, 1995, and had two children (source: Threads/wolf_sista

Evan Musikantow is in prison after failing to support his two children from his first marriage

But by 2003, the marriage was falling apart, as Evan’s alleged hard-partying lifestyle took a toll, according to court records.

Dawn claimed in court filings that Evan spent $1 million that year to fund his alcohol, cocaine and gambling addictions.

Dawn further claimed that Evan was shielding his enormous wealth through a web of businesses and a family trust, and that he was attempting to sell the marital home from under her and the children.

She was granted custody of the children and court-ordered financial support. The court initially ordered Evan to pay $5,500 a month toward the family.

Dawn did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.

Evan initially moved to Beverly Hills where he took a job as a high-end real estate agent. There, he met Zuber, a businesswoman and married mother of three from Phoenix.

The couple married in March 2009, and have two teenage sons together.

Evan tried to rebuild his career and in 2011, he and Zuber launched a hybrid barbershop, bar and restaurant concept called Minibar.ber.shop in Scottsdale. Evan had ambitions to expand it to California.

Nicole Zuber told the Daily Mail that Evan was the driving force behind his father’s massive Applebee’s empire (source: Nicole Zuber)

Allen Musikantow, now 86, owned and operated around 480 Applebee’s restaurants across 23 states before selling his company in 2001 (source: LinkedIn/Allen Musikantow)

The venture attracted investors, and grossed $250,000 in sales in 2012, something prosecutors would later cite as evidence that Evan had neglected his children.

When the Minibar.ber.shop expansion failed, relations with a key investor deteriorated into litigation, leaving Evan saddled with $3 million in debts and legal bills, Zuber claimed.

With few work prospects, Evan sued his father and a law firm involved in the Apple American Group sale in 2005, claiming he was entitled to 20 percent of the proceeds from the 2001 sale.

Zuber claimed Evan was the driving force behind its rapid expansion.

‘Allen was the money guy, and Evan did all the work,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘He’s awesome at zoning, permitting, building. He’s great at negotiations, a very charismatic guy, loves to talk. Sometimes too much. He loves to walk into a restaurant and tip everyone.

‘He’s just like that. He’s old Chicagoan, he knows how to work a room.’

When it came to the proceeds from a sale of his father’s restaurant business, Evan claimed he was left with nothing despite an alleged oral agreement between the pair to pay Evan 20 percent.

But in a response to Evan’s lawsuit, Allen maintained that he gave his son $1 million, and owed him nothing more.

A judge dismissed the case, ruling that the oral agreement was unenforceable and the claims were filed too late.

Nicole and Evan went into business together shortly after marrying in 2009

Evan Musikantow pictured with his children from his second marriage with Nicole Zuber

Evan was constantly having to return to Chicago for court hearings related to the child support payments, which Zuber claimed she would have to pay for.

‘I got sick of it. I’m like, I am not paying to fly you to Chicago every time you have a court hearing. So, he wouldn’t go, and his ex wife would go in and say, I need $10,000 a month. Bang, the court would award her $10,000 a month.’

As judgments piled up against Evan for unpaid child support, he was placed on Illinois’s now-defunct ‘Deadbeats Most Wanted List,’ which named and shamed 100 parents who owed more than $5,000 in overdue payments.

In 2018, a federal grand jury indicted him under the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act, a law aimed at parents who willfully fail to pay substantial child support across state lines.

Evan descended into a deep depression and was drinking a 1.75-liter bottle of vodka a day, Zuber claimed.

‘I mean, he was, like, depressed, depressed, depressed,’ she said. ‘After he was labeled a deadbeat dad, he couldn’t get a job anywhere.’

The same year, police alleged that Evan impersonated his father to try to purchase a Maserati and a Mercedes at a car dealership in Scottsdale.

He also tried to rent a house and an apartment using Allen’s identification.

Zuber claimed the incident was part of an elaborate prank to try to get even with his father, and that there was no financial cost to the family patriarch. Evan would eventually serve two years in prison for identity theft and DUI charges.

‘We were making progress and then he would just go and do stupid stuff,’ Zuber told the Daily Mail.

Allen, now 86, claimed he paid his son $1 million and that he does not owe Evan another cent

Evan Musikantow called his prosecution for dodging child support payments ‘outrageously unfair’

‘Afterwards, Allen told him he wished he had never been born.’

In October 2025, Evan finally went on trial for allegedly dodging child support charges.

Prosecutors produced a 2022 federal tax return that showed Evan had made $231,000 in gross income and purchased a four-bedroom home in Scottsdale for $660,000 and a Mercedes the following year.

Records produced by prosecutors also showed Evan paid only around $3,000 in child support from July 2009 through July 2017.

Indignant, Evan called the prosecution ‘outrageously unfair’, and told the Chicago Sun-Times he was being treated like Al Capone.

‘They say I am Public Enemy No. 1. They have a vendetta. They don’t care what the truth is,’ he told the Sun-Times.

After a three-day criminal trial, he was found guilty on October 1 and sentenced to two years in federal prison. He was also ordered to pay $1,092,561.80 in restitution.

His father’s testimony against him during the trial felt like the final betrayal, Zuber said.

‘Evan got in a fight with his dad one time, and he told me, ‘All I wanted is for him to say he was proud of me,’ and he wouldn’t.’

At sentencing, US District Judge John J Tharp Jr was particularly angered by evidence that Evan allegedly had wagered $11,200 at a casino in 2014, winning $3,200, while paying nothing to his children that year.

Andrew Boutros, US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, was scathing about Evan’s efforts to avoid making the child payments, saying that he ‘blames everyone but himself for his nearly 20 years of contemptuous conduct.’

The Musikantows owned and operated over 400 Applebee’s locations before Allen Musikantow sold the company in 2001

‘As the evidence at trial starkly illustrated, it was a college-educated, business-experienced, able-bodied defendant who dodged, bobbed, and weaved his way around multiple court orders and findings of contempt year after year to provide very little child support for his two children in this district. There was and is no credible defense to this contemptuous abandonment.’

For Zuber, the child-support prosecution cannot be separated from what she believes is the travesty of Evan missing out on his share of the family business.

She maintains that Evan is due $20 million plus damages, and is continuing to fight for the money even as her husband languishes behind bars, and litigation continues through the chancery court in Illinois.

‘I stand by him, because I don’t know what else I would do,’ she said.

‘I feel like I’ve been yelling from the top of the mountains, and nobody will listen to me, and it’s so frustrating.

‘That’s why I’m sending my files out to the FBI, the Department of Justice, the IRS, asking where do I go? Can you do an accounting? I’m sending stuff to everybody.’