Here are the millionaires who’ve gone broke! 9 - Allen Iverson
For anyone growing up watching basketball in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Allen
Iverson was their pick for quickest crossover in the league. Iverson was blessed with enough quickness
to play for 14 seasons in the NBA. Over the course of Iverson’s career, he
earned a staggering TWO hundred million dollars, with $155 million from his salary and another
40-50 million in endorsements. Because of that earning power, he allegedly
traveled with an entourage of as many as 50 people at times. He showered friends and family, especially
his mother, with cars, jewelry, houses and expensive vacations. However, even for someone earning millions,
bad spending habits can catch up quick. Allen’s financial situation came to light
in 2012 after a judge ordered him to pay nine hundred thousand to a Georgia jeweler but
apparently Iverson didn’t have the money to cut the check. He told the judge that his monthly income
was $62,500 but that his expenses were $360,000. Yeah, almost 300k in the hole each month?! What kinda math is this?! Apparently $125,000 goes to paying back various
creditors and mortgages, then there’s ten thousand on clothes, and another ten thousand
on restaurants and entertainment. And oh yeah, ten thousand on groceries. How many people was Iverson feeding to have
a 10k grocery bill?! During the divorce proceedings with his then-wife,
Iverson claimed he was too broke to even afford a cheeseburger. But in a 2015 interview on CBS This Morning,
he said that the rumors of his bankruptcy were quote “a myth.” Despite being one of the highest-paid athletes
in the past, the latest figures value Iverson’s net worth at just a million in 2017. To be honest, with that sort of spending he
was doing, that’s not bad at all. 8 - Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes is the founder and CEO of Theranos, a privately-held blood test company
based in Palo Alto, California. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes as the youngest
self-made female billionaire in the world, thanks to a $9 billion valuation of Theranos. However, all that would quickly fall apart,
because basically the company was alleged to have made up the efficacy of the company’s
products! In October 2015, the Wall Street Journal published
an investigation of Theranos alleging that only 15 of the 240 tests Theranos offers are
conducted on the company's signature Edison machines, while the rest were run on older
traditional blood testing machines. Also, when the tests were actually run on
the company’s own machines, its lab test results were sometimes inaccurate. On April 21, 2017, the Wall Street Journal
reported that an investor had alleged that Theranos had misled company directors about
its practices concerning laboratory testing. According to a lawsuit filed by the investor,
Theranos had used a shell company to secretly buy lab equipment to run fake demonstrations
with. However, the case was settled on May 1st 2017. Forbes eventually released an updated valuation
of $800 million for Theranos, which would make Holmes’s stake essentially worthless,
because investors own preferred shares and would be paid before Holmes, who owns common
stock. Holmes reportedly owes a nice little 25 million
dollar debt to Theranos because she exercised some of her stock options. But if you really think about it…..she really
shouldn’t have technically been a billionaire anyways since a lot of the technology was
just made up. 7 - Dennis Rodman
You guys remember Dennis Rodman as the Worm when he played for the Bulls right?! Most people probably now know him as one of
Rocketman’s good friends! However, a lot of people forget that he was
pretty much an NBA superstar who earned about $50 million throughout his career. Let’s also don’t forget about that legendary
movie he made with Dane Cook called Simon Sez. Rodman somehow managed to blow through 50
million really easily, and he wasn’t able to pay the roughly 800 grand in back child
support he owed to his ex-wife two children and the roughly 50 grand he owed as spousal
support to his third ex-wife. You’d think Rodman would have learned by
now to stop having kids and ex-wives! But things got so bad he had to plead with
attorneys to defend him pro bono! 6 - Sean Quinn
Sean Quinn was once the richest man in Ireland. Quinn is the epitome of the self-made businessman. At age 14, he dropped out of school. With a loan of just 100 pounds, he began building
a business -- which came to be known as the QUINN Group. In 2008, Forbes estimated Quinn's net worth
at $6 billion dollars! However, derivatives trading in the late 2000’s
were Quinn's undoing - in essence they’re financial products which allow someone to
bet on a stock without actually having to own the stock. Quinn was betting that the price per share
of Anglo Irish Bank would go up and he would profit from the difference between the price
at which he bought the derivative contracts and the new price. However, the share price nosedived and Quinn
was in trouble. Eventually things got so bad that in 2011,
Quinn ended up owing the Anglo Irish Bank 2.8 billion euros and later that year, he
claimed to only have 11,000 pounds in the bank. Soon after, an Irish court declared him bankrupt. As of April, 2011, Sean Quinn and the Quinn
family no longer have any role in the management, operations or ownership of the Quinn Group. 5 - Antoine Walker
Antoine Walker is another former NBA player who was making bank. Before the age of 20, he had won an NCAA championship
at Kentucky University. Walker quickly became a superstar in the league,
and he got paid like one too. However, as with many other athletes, instant
wealth meant instant luxury for Walker. Instead of thinking about the future, he spent
lavishly on cars, jewelry and homes. Despite making more than a hundred million
dollars during his career, Walker filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010, with total assets
of $4.3 million and debts of $12.7 million, just two years after retirement! According to Walker, the real catalyst to
his financial situation was the Great Recession. The economic chaos was what did in Walker
Ventures, his Chicago real estate firm. Things got so bad that he had to even sell
off his championship ring with the Miami Heat. However, in August 2013, Walker announced
that he was debt-free. But really though, what took Walker to this
point wasn’t bad investment decisions, but rather poor spending habits. 4 - Michael Vick
Remember when Michael Vick was caught dog fighting and went to jail? He actually played 13 years in the NFL, and
he signed not just one, but actually TWO hundred million dollar contracts in his career, although
he didn’t get to capitalize on the full deal on either one. Vick spent money as freely as he could, as
he helped out some 30 family members and associates. For example, Vick’s younger brother got
a new car every year on his birthday. We don’t really need to get into Vick’s
sophisticated and brazen dog operations. Although this issue didn’t cause Vick to
spend freely, but it definitely hurt his earning power, at least for a while anyways. On July 7, 2008, Vick sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection, listing assets of less than $50 million against different debts ranging from
10 to 50 million. Vick lost most of his assets in the bankruptcy,
and the Atlanta Falcons added insult to injury by getting back approximately 20% of Vick’s
$37 million signing bonus, after initially being awarded almost 20 million back. 3 - Patricia Kluge
Patricia Kluge is the ex-wife of John Kluge, the founder of Metromedia. The two were married in 1981. By the time they divorced nine years later,
her husband John was ranked by Forbes as the richest man in the US, worth more than $5
billion. However, Patricia walked away with let’s
at least call it a decent sized settlement, estimated to have been around ONE hundred
MILLION dollars. She also got Albemarle, a 24,000-square-foot
neo-Georgian home. In 1999 she established the Kluge Estate Winery
and Vineyard on 960 acres of land near Albemarle. The Kluge Estate Winery quickly won critical
acclaim and Kluge wines were making their way to the dinner tables of upscale restaurants. Patricia decided to basically go all in for
some reason. She took out $65 million in loans, and the
money went into expanding wine production and building a super-luxury subdivision called
Vineyard Estates, which was to include 24 multimillion-dollar homes with pools, tennis
courts, horse trails, and space for private vineyards. However, the housing crisis hit. Vineyard Estates failed to draw buyers. In 2009 Kluge put Albemarle up for sale initially
for $100 million. That figure was cut to $48 million in early
2010 and then to $24 million. To make a long story short, no buyer turning
up for Albemarle, and Kluge stopped making payments and defaulted on nearly $24 million
in loans from Bank of America. However, Trump, a longtime friend of Kluge’s,
actually bought out the vineyard at a foreclosure auction in 2011 for 6.2 million from Bank
of America, and in Oct of 2012 Trump finally buys Albemarle House from BofA for $6.7 million,
completing his acquisition of the entire estate. In the process, Kluge files for personal bankruptcy
in 2011. Wellps, you win some, and you lose some. 2 - Jamie Gold
Jamie Gold is an American television producer, a talent agent, and poker player, based in
Malibu, California. He’s best known for winning the 2006 World
Series of Poker Main Event in which he bluffed and talked a lot on his way to the coveted
main event title. Gold is well known for his unusual table talk,
which often confused his opponents and led them to making the wrong decisions either
by folding the best hand, or calling with the worst hand. Gold’s payday for the win was a staggering
TWELVE million dollars, which is still the biggest payday ever for winning the main event
title. However, trouble began brewing early for Gold
as soon as he won the tournament. A business associate of Gold’s, television
producer Crispin Leyser sued Gold for $6 million dollars, claiming he had an agreement with
Gold prior to the tournament to split any of his winnings with Leyser. The lawsuit was eventually settled, with the
terms not disclosed. Financial issues have consistently plagued
Gold since his main event victory and many people have seen him playing in smaller cash
games at local casinos. When it was revealed that Gold’s bracelet
was up for auction, it was widely speculated that he was broke. What do you guys think? When someone starts auctioning off some momentous
achievements, does that mean they’re strapped for cash?! 1 - Eike Batista Eike Batista is a Brazilian business magnate
who made and lost a fortune in mining and oil and gas exploration. At his peak in early 2012, he was worth an
estimated $35 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaire index. Yes, that’s BILLION with a B. That made
him the seventh-richest person on Earth and the wealthiest person in Brazil. However, as ridiculous as it sounds, a year
later virtually all of his wealth had evaporated. By 2014 Batista found himself holding another
rare title, that of a negative billionaire as now he owed a net $1.2 BILLION to creditors! How did THAT happen?! The losses can be attributed largely because
of the downturn in the precious metals mining industry as well as a catastrophic collapse
of Batista's company OGX. His company claimed it could pump 750,000
barrels of oil a day—only to find itself pumping 15,000 barrels of oil a day instead. Writers for business and finance related media,
such as Forbes magazine and Businessweek, are still trying to figure out whether Eike
Batista holds the record for having been the fastest destroyer of wealth. Here’s what’s next!
