Bethany Joy Lenz Says She Lost Millions to a Cult: It Was Horrifying (Exclusive) [Video]

When Bethany Joy Lenz was filming One Tree Hill over the course of nine years, she never imagined that all the money she earned from the series would eventually get wiped out by the leader of a small Christian cult that she’d been lured into over the entire decade.

In her new memoir Dinner For Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), out Oct. 22, she openly talks about how it felt to escape both her marriage and the cult, only to discover they’d wiped her bank account of close to $2 million.

“It was really horrifying,” she tells PEOPLE for a story in this week’s print issue. She explains that she basically had to start over from scratch, despite being on one of the most popular teen dramas of the early aughts.

“To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends [from the cult] …