Billionaires Who Lost All Their Money

everybody loses money at some point it's easy to do be it through a hole in your pocket or a luckless night at the casino but losing a billion dollars or more is actually very difficult with the complex assets and shares that usually surrounds a billionaires fortune losing it all requires some colossal slip-ups but the people I'll be discussing today could write the book on billion dollar blunders so pay close attention if you ever make it big learning from these guys might just save you from total ruin number 10 Patricia Kluger there are worse ways to end a marriage than walking away with a billion dollars but that's what bellydancer turns socialite businesswoman Patricia Kruger did following her separation from television mogul John Kluge in 1990 Patricia receives settlements of around a million dollars every year plus a 100 million dollar home eventually making her a billionaire already established in the upper echelons of American high society Luka felt compelled to continue the lavish lifestyle afforded by her marriage this involved scandalously decadent hunting parties which were facilitated with the help of her minion house servants her own business ventures into the wine world were successful but the 2008 recession coupled with her lavish lifestyle cost her dearly glue his aggressive expansion of her wine company clewd estate winery and the establishment of the super luxurious vineyard estates only exacerbated her financial problems with the housing crisis even the rich weren't much interested in buying her multimillion-dollar homes even if they did come with private vineyards the venture hemorrhaged money for Cuba eventually forcing her to file for bankruptcy in 2011 times are still tough for Kluger but I hear that belly-dancing business is booming and it's never too late to get those hips moving again number 9 Phillip are Bennett while it's tricky to lose billionaire status once you have it it's easier if you commit fraud on the regular when Phillip Bennett CEO of new york-based brokerage firm Rothko noticed hundreds of millions in losses from unpaid loans he had the perfect solution disguising the losses as receivables oh derevko by another company Bennett's secretly owned they'd effectively disappeared and the world would be none the wiser the arrangement allowed Bennett indulgences like his seven Ferraris a twenty million dollar plane and a few Andy Warhol paintings at the height of his fraudster activities in the early 2000s Bennett had procured a tidy one-and-a-half billion from unwitting investors helping him a massive personal fortune of just over a billion but unfortunately authorities discovered the debt and Bennett was forced to pay for his lifestyle the hard way by paying back what he owed causing his firm to go bankrupt and thinking long and hard about his actions over a 16 year prison sentence number II Bjork golfer Goodman s'en the second Icelandic billionaire in history bjergaard Goodman s'en was beaten to the taggle by his son Thor no hammers here though just insane wealth pure golfers dishonest dabbling in the shipping industry in the 80s where he misrepresented earnings and bankrupted his company culminated in the near collapse of the state-owned Fisheries bank of Iceland his resulting 12-month suspended sentence didn't turn him off business though in the early 2000s he amassed a billion-dollar fortune in the brewing and pharmaceutical industries furthering his wealth by purchasing substantial shares in Iceland's second largest bank lands bankin he also enjoyed ownership of English shocker club West Ham United but in 2008 the global banking crisis hit Iceland hard unluckily for Goodman s'en the Icelandic government refused to bail out privatized banks leaving Bank shareholders to bear the brunt of enormous debts within the space of a year Goodman syns Network dropped from 1.1 billion to zero the following year he was declared bankrupt with remaining debts of over 700 million dollars as if his life wasn't already enough of a mess in 2015 he was given a four year sentence for misleading lands banking customers leading up to the 2008 financial crisis number seven Allan Stanford for some billionaires there's no point having all that not spending it this was the viewpoint of Texan Alan Stanford who began his journey to extreme wealth and real estate during the 1980s with his growing fortune he launched Stanford International Bank in 1985 basing the company in Antigua in the following year Stanford constructed a global finance Empire and was even knighted by the Antiguan government in 2006 but while an economic here on the eyes of some rumors began to spread word had it that Stanford's lavish displays of wealth like his 100 million-dollar fleet of private jets 20 million cricket tournament cash prizes and 10 million-dollar mansion were tied in with bribery money laundering and political manipulation not to mention the reports that he treated his bank as a personal atm eventually in 2009 Stanford was arrested after an investigation found Stanford Financial Group to be little more than a Ponzi scheme it had promised investors safe lucrative investments but in reality had been funneling cash into its owner's pockets all while falsifying records to hide the evidence while Stanford was ordered to repay nearly 7 billion and had long since been spent his personal fortune at the time totaled 2 billion leaving some of his 18 thousand investors millions of dollars worse off for them the 69 year olds 110 year sentence might be some consolation but it doesn't pay for a new yet number 6 Sean Quinn Irishman Sean Quinn's career grew outwards from a small gravel business with other ventures spanning the construction insurance and hospitality industries among others and his prime the Sean Quinn of 2008 enjoyed a net worth of approximately 6 billion making him the richest man in Ireland besides his fancy house in the Irish countryside he was much less flashy with his wealth than the likes of allen Stanford still much of Quinn's cash was tied up in Anglo Irish Bank in which he held a 30% stake but following some overly risky Gamble's alongside the 2008 financial crash Quinn's fortune was sacked Quinn had been taking out enormous loans from the bank to bet on changes in its own share prices but when the 2008 crisis sent shares plummeting at alarming rates Anglo Irish Bank was national and called for Quinn to pay his debts this three billion dollar debt together with huge losses in Quinn's insurance company in the general decline of the market left Quinn bankrupt in 2011 with more than three billion still owed luckily in 2015 around three billion of Quinn's debts were written off leaving him to pay only around $20,000 reports suggest he's now working as a consultant but any regular job must seem a little underwhelming having once been the richest man in Ireland number five Elizabeth Holmes with a life of billionaire ambitions and the smarts to manifest them Elizabeth Holmes seemed destined for greatness she dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to pursue a company she'd started during her time there the company eventually named Theron house offered revolutionary services and technology for diagnosing and monitoring diseases and administering drugs and soon became one of Silicon Valley's most promising startups by 2014 400 million dollars of investments that flooded in valuing their notes at nine billion and homes that net worth the four and a half billion homes operated a policy of extreme secrecy regarding thier enosis operations which investors were satisfied with until it in 2015 when the FDA launched an investigation into the company's methods Holmes chief scientists had warned her about inaccuracies in their tests and problems with their technology but she continued business regardless the FDA discovered these inaccuracies as well as the fact that their notes have been using standard industry blood analysis equipment and place of their own failing tech and investigations were made public homes shut their nose down for good in 2018 forced to return money to investors after being charged with massive fraud and the fortunes of both their company and herself dwindled to nothing her trial is set for 2020 and the future looks anything but bright for Holmes number four ate off Merkel the story of adolf merkel is one of tragedy bad timing and even worse luck through the late 20th century Merkel developed his father's chemical business into the largest pharmaceutical retailer in German this alongside other ventures in pharmacy finance and construction landed him a net worth of twelve point eight billion by 2007 never one for excess merkel rode a 15 year old bicycle shopped at Aldi and flew economy but as frugal living couldn't save him from the economic crash of 2008 trouble came during an otherwise routine acquisition of a British cement company by ve M Merkel's holding company Merkel used his own cement company shares his collateral to see the deal through when share prices from Merkel's holding company dropped a whopping seventy five percent in the banking crisis banks began demanding accelerated loan repayments Merkel was forced to make personal guarantees from his personal assets costing him an initial 3.6 billion dollars a speculative bet in October that year that Volkswagen share prices would drop became another billion dollar mistake for Merkel when VW stock skyrocketed quadrupling in price in January 2009 with the collapse of his family business seeming inevitable he threw himself in front of a train near his home he likely realized his pledge to personally front vm's debts which by then reached an extra six billion would have been the end of his family's name in the business world number three in slacker sometimes the quickest to rise fall the hardest no one exemplifies this better than Ange slacker the German tycoon opened his first drug store in 1975 and within two years had opened a hundred by 2011 his 14,000 store continental Empire was worth 10 billion dollars as for Schleicher his personal wealth peaked at 4 billion in 2011 which he liked a splash on his expensive sports car collection but insurmountable competition from rival chains mixed with cases of fraud and illegally under paying employees led to the Schleck empires collapse an expensive marketing push to restore the brand's reputation failed spectacularly and Schleicher declared bankruptcy in 2012 all the while Anton had been funnel millions into his family's personal accounts a 14 million dollar mistake heinous family would pay for both monetarily and with jail time falling from a total of 14 billion under his control to nothing this man should have invested in a parachute number to Bernie Madoff beginning in penny stocks Bernie Madoff grew himself into one of the most prominent respected and influential figures in the stock market throughout the 70s and 80s by the late 80s he was making around a hundred million dollars a year allowing him to transfer his wealth into houses yachts sports cars and various overseas accounts thanks to his magic touch investors soon began pumping as much as 300 million a pop into his well respected firm the substantial returns made off presented to his investors kept him happy but were in fact entirely fabricated his system revolves around using money from new investors to pay returns to any existing clients who sought to cash out which meant walking a tightrope act since as far back as the 80s but it was only when investors attempted to redeem 7 billion at once that birdie got rumbled in reality there was only around 300 million available in December 2008 reportedly upon discovering the nature of Bernie's Ponzi scheme his sons are boarded into the federal authorities while 65 billion was the often stated total defrauded from investors around two-thirds of this was actually the fictional returns Bernie had convinced his investors existed in reality the total principal funds were more like twenty billion regardless Bernie was given a 150 years sentence his personal assets were forfeited or at least as many could be located which was tricky with such a gift that conman amounting to just under a billion dollars the punishment was extended to his family who were forced to forfeit their own assets for their involvement Bernie if you wanted to bond over finance with your family you could have just played Monopoly number one Aiki Batista Brazilian entrepreneur Eike Batista began his career as a door-to-door insurance salesman but soon moved into the precious metals and oil trades taking the gold and diamond mining markets by storm through the 80s 90s and 2000's Batista was sitting on 36 billion by 2012 he became well known for his playboy lifestyle of Lamborghinis yachts and private jets but despite but these days and visions to become the richest man on earth a sharp downturn in the precious metals industry and the Brazilian economy between 2012 and 2014 spelled trouble on top of all of this his oil company collapsed into bankruptcy once it was discovered to be greatly exaggerating production claims promising to pay back all of his resulting debts left Batista with personal losses of 35 billion in a single year a number which approached 37 billion in the following years a bank balance of negative 1 billion dollars was all like he was left with to make matters worse in 2018 Batista was found guilty of paying more than 16 million in political bribes for public contracts during his peak years in Brazil he was sentenced at 30 years in prison I guess you could say Aiki Batista bombed so how do you feel about these billionaires do you have any sympathy for them and how would you avoid losing it all as a billionaire let me know in the comments section below thanks for watching you

Channel: BE AMAZED

Views: 231,685

Keywords: beamazed, be amazed, top 10, billionaires who lost everything, the richest, famous people, eike batista, lottery winners, vijay mallya, elizabeth holmes, sean quinn, allen stanford, bernie madoff, luxury cars, jeff bezos, riches to rags, bjorgolfur gudmundsson, millionaires who lost it all, mike tyson, jordan belfort, billionaire lifestyle, luxurious lifestyle

Id: kqmj2L0tO4o

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019