Michelle Janetis

About Michelle Janetis

Playboy Special Editions Natural Beauties #6, April 2003
Playboy Special Editions Natural Beauties #7, March 2004
American Curves # 37, October 2007

Michelle Mainoni is a former American actress and model. She gained early attention in October 1996 by winning a highly-publicized local "Baywatch" search competition in South Florida at age 18. She worked as an actress, promotional and glamour model, and nightclub hostess in South Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the early 2000s. She went on to work in commercial modeling and hospitality, managing local clientele at hotspots like the former Crobar Nightclub on South Beach. In June 2007, she was featured as a contestant on the web-based reality competition show, Girls and Guns, filmed in Homestead, Florida.

Mainoni gained widespread public attention after appearing in the 2023 Netflix true-crime docuseries Gunther's Millions.

Mainoni was recruited in the early 2000s to join an inner circle of models, actors, and employees known as "The Burgundians." The group was tasked with helping to manage and live luxurious lives as part of an elaborate, eccentric lifestyle experiment originally established by Maurizio Mian and the mythos surrounding Gunther, the world's richest dog. This group was formed by Mian, an Italian eccentric and pharmaceutical heir who claimed to manage the massive fortune of the German Shepherd.

Mainoni was a central figure in the four-part Netflix docuseries, which revealed the controversial and fabricated nature of the dog's wealth and detailed how the inner circle operated.

In the early 2000s, Mainoni was working as a model and actress in Florida when she was recruited into the group by her boyfriend at the time, Lee Dahlberg. She moved into Madonna’s former Miami mansion, which Mian had purchased using the dog's trust. The group was marketed as a pop music group, but had little musical talent. While ostensibly brought together as a pop-music and entertainment group to live a lavish lifestyle, Mainoni and the other members were actually the subjects of a bizarre, pseudo-scientific behavioral experiment.

In the documentary, Mainoni revealed that life in the house quickly turned dark and weird. Researchers in lab coats monitored the members 24/7, bedroom cameras were installed, and behavior—including routine sexual relationships among members—was heavily studied and encouraged like a cult-style social experiment. Mian's experiment routinely pushed the members into open sexuality and group intimacy, which Mainoni described as starting off glamorous before quickly becoming "weird" and uncomfortable. Mainoni eventually left the group after growing deeply uncomfortable with the restrictive, heavily monitored group dynamics.

According to follow-up reports from the docuseries, Mainoni transitioned away from the entertainment industry. She pivoted to an entirely different field inspired by her unusual past. She channels her love for animals and runs her own professional dog-boarding and dog-sitting business from her home. She lives in Florida and is engaged to sales and marketing director Joey Fazio.