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!