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Cash-crunched actor Nicolas Cage’s two homes in New Orleans were auctioned off that week, and movers carted away some of the “National Treasure” star’s treasured doodads.

Carpets and a stained-glass window were among the items removed from one house, according to TMZ.com.

The two Big Easy properties, in the French Quarter and Garden District, went under the hammer Thursday after a local lender foreclosed for unpaid mortgage debts, reported the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s site, Nola.com.

Cage, whose father died last month, did not attend the auction, the Web site said.
GOING, GONE: Movers empty a New Orleans home of star Nicolas Cage, who was forced to auction off two houses to pay debts.

The Oscar winner and extravagant shopper — he has owned at least two castles and two Bahamian islands — is currently mired in a money meltdown, with the IRS claiming he owes around $6 million in unpaid taxes.

There were reports yesterday that Johnny Depp would come to his pal Cage’s fiscal rescue. Cage had jump-started a young Depp’s career by directing him to his own agent.

“Johnny called Nic and basically told him not to concern, and he’d help him and

sort everything out,” London’s Daily Express said, quoting an unnamed friend.

Cage’s rep, Annett Wolf, denied the claim. “that is 100 percent false,” she told The Post. “Mr. Cage is handling his own financial affairs.” Wolf declined to comment about Cage’s fiscal status.

Cage has blamed his business manager, insisting he sent him “down a path toward financial ruin.”

In a lawsuit filed in California, Cage claims that by a period of seven years, business manager Samuel Levin “placed Cage in numerous highly speculative and risky real-estate investments, resulting in Cage suffering catastrophic losses,” TMZ reported last month.

Levin yesterday did not return a shout for comment.

Cage outbid actor Leo DiCaprio at an auction in 2007, shelling out $276,000 for a dinosaur cranium, New York magazine said in a recent issue.

As of October 2009, “most of his dozen or so homes, 50 cars, two islands, two yachts and jet have been sold, foreclosed upon or are on the market,” the magazine said.

When it comes to overspending, Cage has said, “I find ways of spending money that mystify everybody around me.”

NY POST

Original post by m.coonce