The new Netflix documentary Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal brings new light to the 2015 Ashley Madison leak, in which millions of names – including celebrity names – were exposed for scouting for extramarital affairs online. One name frequently cited was Jionni Lavalle, a reality TV star best known as the husband of iconic Jersey Shore cast member Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. The scandal didn’t seem to rock the famous couple, so was there any truth to the allegations brought to the world’s attention by cyber-criminals?
What was the Ashley Madison scandal?
The Ashley Madison data breach, as it is commonly referred to, was a 2015 incident in which a cyber vigilante group known as “The Impact Team” leaked the data of users of Ashley Madison, a dating website for users looking to have extramarital affairs — a site that, until then, prided itself on its ability to be discreet. The leak publicly released over 2.5GB of data — including up to 30 million names — of users associated with the site, including those who had deleted their account prior to the hack.
Celebrity names were also included in the leak, including Jionni LaValle, Hunter Biden (son of then-future U.S. President Joe Biden), and Josh Duggar — then known as one of the children on popular reality series 19 Kids and Counting. While Duggar eventually admitted he was on the site and had indeed cheated on his wife (one of many controversies surrounding Duggar), fellow reality TV star LaValle, along with his wife Snooki, has always maintained his innocence.
Snooki and Jionni’s relationship timeline
Snooki’s first meeting with future husband Jionni was accidentally documented in 2010, during the filming of season 3 of Jersey Shore. The two had a seemingly meaningless one-night stand, where Snooki forgot his name and referred to him as “Bernard,” but by season 4, they has reconnected and were in a serious relationship. During the filming of the fourth season, which was set in Florence, Italy, the two broke up after a series of explosive arguments, as well as Snooki subsequently hooking up with her castmate, Vinny Guadagnino.
However, the pair were able to patch things up and put their feud behind them, and by season 6, the two were expecting a baby. The two married in 2014, and LaValle has appeared in the spin-off Snooki & JWoww. Jionni does not appear, but is referenced in the revival series Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, as he has taken a step back from TV appearances due to backlash in the press, which was certainly not helped by the Ashley Madison accusations.
So, was Jionni LaValle really on Ashley Madison?
Since 2015, both Snooki and Jionni have consistently denied that LaValle ever had an account on Ashley Madison. Speaking on her Naturally Nicole podcast at the time of the allegations, as documented by In Touch Weekly, Snooki said that “I’m lucky if he knows how to even use a computer, yet go on Ashley Madison to cheat on me.”
Instead, Snooki implied it was the work of a catfish, using her husband’s identity to scam users of the website. “It’s so stupid, and we honestly think, like, someone is trying to f**k with us because this isn’t the first story that Jionni’s been cheating on me. But all these stories never have evidence. There’s never a photo, there’s never text messages, there’s nothing.”
Polizzi pointed to one specific flaw in the allegations — that LaValle would allow a digital and banking footprint to trace him to solid proof that he had cheated (or intended to cheat) on his wife.
“If he wanted to cheat on me, he would go to a club and cheat on me, or go out and cheat on me. He wouldn’t go on Ashley Madison to pay money to cheat on me. Like, he’s not an ugly guy. He’s beautiful, do you know what I mean?”
Snooki and Jionni once again denied the cheating rumor in 2024, when reached for a comment by the producers of the new documentary, as shown in a statement at the end of episode two.
The couple are still married to this day, and now share three children together. Whether or not the allegations were true, it does not seem to have affected their marriage too much — if anything, the success of their relationship seems to disprove them. If Jionni did actually have an account with Ashley Madison, which seems less likely in light of Snooki’s comments on the matter, this is being kept as a strictly private matter between the two.
