By Eleanor Gower


With a personal fortune said to hover around the $650 million mark, Madonna is one of the most successful and wealthiest entertainers in the world.

But it seems her older brother Anthony Ciccone has not been so fortunate.

It has emerged that the 55-year-old is living rough on the streets of Michigan, relying on the kindness of churches and charities for money.

Anthony told local newspaper The Michigan Messenger that he spent last winter battling frostbite living under a bridge in the northern ski town of Traverse City.

'My family turned their back on me, basically, when I was having a hard time,' he told the paper.

'You think I haven't answered this kind of question a bazillion times - why my sister is a multibazillionarie, and I'm homeless on the street?

'Never say never,' added Anthony who was pictured in a suit at his maternal grandmother's funeral; earlier this year. 'This could happen to anybody.'

The comment was the only reference he made to his superstar sister, who was out in New York last night with her manager and friend Guy Oseary.

She looked a far cry from a 'multibazillionarie' in an ultra casual outfit of black baggy tracksuit bottoms, black jacket and patterned scarf.

Millionaire: Madonna looked happy and relaxed stepped out in New York yesterday with her manager Guy Oseary

Meanwhile her brother claims to have been living on the streets for more than a year after losing his job at the family winery.

Ciccone Vineyard is run by Madonna's father Tony, 80, and his wife Joan, who he married following the death of Madonna's mother, also named Madonna, from cancer in 1963.

Anthony's job was to help sell the produce, which at one point included five varieties of 'Madonna' wine.

Wine business: Anthony previously worked with his 80-year-old father Tony Ciccone at his winery in Michigan

The second of eight children who include Martin, Paula, Christopher and Melanie, along with half siblings Mario and Jennifer, Anthony told the paper how he had been forced to resort to extreme measures in order to survive.

'I don’t have any income,' he said. 'I’ve got to go collect bottles and cans, do odd jobs.'

The freezing winter in the town left Anthony battling frostbite on his feet last year.

Destitute: Anthony is thought to have been sometimes living underneath the city's Union Street bridge

'If you spend enough time on frozen concrete without proper insulation you will get frostbite,' he said. 'You have no idea how gruesome it is.

'You get nerve damage. That’s the milder stage, in the severe stage you have tissue damage, that is when you lose parts of your body.'

'A friend of mine lost all ten toes. Several have died of hypothermia.'

Anthony reveals he huddles in the lobby at the local jail or hypermarket to stay warm, while relying on free meals at churches.

However, he hasn't been the only Madonna sibling to hit the headlines of late.

Keep it together: Madonna poses in the 1980s with her eight brothers and sisters including Anthony and Christopher

Back in 2008, her younger brother Christopher published a book Life With My Sister Madonna in which he detailed her relationship with ex-husband Guy Richie and depicts the star as manipulative and self-obsessed.

Meanwhile in other Madonna -related news, a U.S. marine who once worked for Madonna has denied being part of an international gun smuggling conspiracy.

Steven Greenoe, 37, appeared in a Liverpool court yesterday accused of smuggling gun components inside his luggage into the UK, charges which he denies.


source:dailymail