The saying goes that the bigger you are, the harder you fall.
We take a look at billionaires who experienced public scrutiny and the impact of a widely known scandal – brought on by personal issues, business-related turmoil, or even federal crimes.
From the highly-publicised Jeffrey Epstein scandal to the demise of notorious Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford, here are 13 of the wildest billionaire scandals that defined the 2010s.
George Soros
George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, plays a key part in conservative efforts to defend US President Donald Trump ahead of a looming impeachment vote. Photo: Ronald Zak/AP Photo
In 2011, George Soros’ then-28-year-old girlfriend sued him for US$50 million, saying he refused to buy her a flat. At the time, he was 80 years old.
Adriana Ferreyr sued the billionaire for emotional distress, claiming he’d reneged on his promise to buy her a multimillion-dollar flat. According to Ferreyr, Soros said he would get her a “dream flat” on New York’s Upper East Side, worth US$1,995,000, only to give it to another girlfriend.
A judge threw out her lawsuit in 2015.
Allen Stanford
R. Allen Stanford, once considered one of the wealthiest people in the US with a financial empire that spanned the Americas, was convicted on charges he bilked investors out of more than US$7 billion. Photo: Nick de la Torre/AP Photo
In 2012, R. Allen Stanford was convicted and given a 110-year sentence in federal prison for running the second-largest Ponzi scheme in US history.
According to CNBC, many of Stanford’s victims were retirees who were promised “safe investments”, making this case of investor fraud even more nefarious. Stanford conned more than 18,000 people out of their money. The scheme – second in size only to Bernie Madoff’s – culminated in investor losses totalling US$7 billion, and many of Stanford’s victims have yet to be returned any of the money they lost.
Dan Cathy
Chick-fil-A president, chairman and CEO Dan Cathy, son of the chain’s founder Truett Cathy, came under fire from LGBT activists in 2012 after voicing support for “traditional marriage”.
While Chick-fil-A is perhaps best known for its crispy chicken sandwiches, the company is also known for its controversies surrounding LGBT rights. Chick-fil-A and its president Dan Cathy, whose current net worth is US$5.2 billion, were scandalised after the company revealed its support for Christian organisations such as Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Salvation Army and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, which have all held anti-gay beliefs over the years.
In 2012, Cathy gave an interview to the Baptist Press in which he said he believed in the “biblical definition of the family unit”, that is, marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Backlash ensued, and while Cathy claimed it was his own personal religious belief and the company did not have an “anti-gay agenda”, activists went as far as to boycott the chain.
The chain has since stopped donating to these organisations, choosing instead to donate to “education, homelessness and hunger”.
Francois-Henri Pinault
Francois-Henri Pinault became embroiled in a child support scandal. Photo: Christophe Morin/Bloomberg
rench luxury fashion tycoon Francois-Henri Pinault became embroiled in a child support scandal with his ex-girlfriend, Linda Evangelista, in 2012.
Pinault, the fashion magnate, owner of PPR and second-richest person in France, landed in hot water in 2012 when his ex-girlfriend, supermodel Linda Evangelista, demanded child support she said she never received. The couple briefly dated and their son, Augustin, was born in 2007. According to court proceedings, Evangelista sought US$46,000 a month from Pinault to cover the costs for caring for Augustin, which included his education, security and a full-time nanny.
The pair later reached an amicable settlement but the details were not made public.
Jacqueline Mars
In 2013, billionaire Jacqueline Mars’ car struck another vehicle, killing a woman and an unborn baby.
Jacqueline Mars, the heiress to the Mars confectionery fortune and company co-owner, was involved in a 2013 car accident that killed a woman and an unborn child. The Washington Post reported, according to authorities, Mars told a witness at the scene of the accident that she had fallen asleep while driving.
The victims in the accident were identified as 86-year-old grandmother Irene Ellisor, who was sitting in the back seat, and the unborn child of Ashley Acker Blakeslee, the driver of the Chrysler minivan struck by Mars’ Porsche SUV. Five other passengers were treated at the hospital.
At the time, Mars was the second-richest woman in the US with a net worth of US$20.5 billion – her net worth currently sits at US$30.2 billion. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour reckless driving charge, resulting in a six-month suspension of her driving licence and a US$2,500 fine.
The Acker family said they never wished for Mars to spend time behind bars for the accident.
“We have only forgiveness in our hearts for her,” Sharon Acker, Ashley Blakeslee’s mother, said in a court statement. “My husband and I would like to say thank you to Mrs. Mars for her kindness thus far, and hope in time that she, too, will find peace.”
Eike Batista
Former billionaire Eike Batista was once Brazil’s richest man with a net worth of US$30 billion. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Once Brazil’s richest man with a net worth of US$30 billion, Eike Batista lost most his wealth when his oil company, OGX, went bankrupt in 2013.
In 2012, Batista was worth an estimated US$30 billion, making him the seventh-richest man in the world.
But when Batista’s oil company failed to meet demands, and Brazil’s economy slid into a decline, the billionaire filed for bankruptcy in 2013. After authorities began investigating why Brazil’s top companies had declined so quickly, they charged Batista with money laundering and corruption in January 2017. In July 2018, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for bribing former Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral.
Silvio Berlusconi
Italy’s conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi and Azione Sociale leader Alessandra Mussolini in Rome. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP
Italian media billionaire and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was charged and found guilty of soliciting sex from an underage sex worker in 2013.
The three-time Italian prime minister was charged with paying for sex with a sex worker who, at the time, was 17. He was also charged with abusing his office to release the teenager from jail at the time. The charges were later overturned after an appeals process.
However, scandal continued to follow the billionaire. In 2013, Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, given a hefty fine and barred from running for public office. However, he managed to evade jail time and his ban from public office was overturned before its expiration in 2019 after a Milan court found him “rehabilitated”.
Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, attends a panel discussion during the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York. Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Elizabeth Holmes fell from grace after it emerged that her medical start-up, Theranos, wasn’t everything it claimed to be.
Holmes was once lauded as a star on the rise in Silicon Valley. Her blood-testing start-up, Theranos, gained attention in the early 2000s as an exciting investment opportunity promising to revolutionise the way patients are tested and treated for various diseases and illnesses. By the end of 2004, the company had raised roughly US$6 million from private investors, some of whom had personal connections to Holmes. By 2015, she topped Forbes’ list of America’s self-made women with a net worth of US$4.5 billion
However, after concerns about the validity of Theranos’ technology was raised to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), things began to turn sour for the rising company.
By November 2015, Theranos had lost its two major partnerships with Safeway and Walgreens. In 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concluded Theranos’ testing might pose a safety risk to patients. After multiple lawsuits, lay-offs and a federal allegation that Holmes had conducted “massive fraud”, Theranos closed its doors in September 2018, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy. Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, were charged with wire fraud by the Department of Justice, with the trial set to begin in August 2020. They have both pleaded not guilty.
Forbes lists Holmes’ personal net worth at $0.
Henry T. Nicholas III
Henry T. Nicholas III, co-founder of Broadcom, was accused of drug trafficking and drug possession. Photo: Danny Moloshok/Reuters
Henry T. Nicholas III, the co-founder of Broadcom, was accused of drug trafficking and drug possession in 2018.
Nicholas and co-defendant, Ashley Christine Fargo, were both spared jail time after entering into a plea deal over two felony drug possession charges filed in 2018. Five charges of drug trafficking were also dropped.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Nicholas called resort security officers after he was locked out of a room at a Las Vegas Strip hotel room. After breaking into the room, officers said they found Fargo “unresponsive” after reportedly inhaling nitrous oxide or “laughing gas,” which is legal. Suitcases found in the room contained drugs, but the defendants argued that there was no way to prove they belonged to either Nicholas or Fargo as people had entered and left the hotel room several times over the days between Fargo and Nicholas’ arrival.
Kylie Jenner
US model Kylie Jenner was criticised for being called ‘self-made’. Photo: Nina Prommer/EPA-EFE
Kylie Jenner was named the youngest “self-made” billionaire by Forbes in 2018, but critics had a problem with what it named her.
Forbes faced backlash after featuring newly-minted billionaire Kylie Jenner on its cover and referring to her as “self-made”. Critics claimed without Jenner’s prior success on Keeping Up With the Kardashians and online social platforms, as well as the help of her mother and manager, Kris Jenner, she would not have been able to make such a jaw-dropping profit from her make-up line, Kylie Cosmetics.
In an interview with The New York Times, Jenner admitted she was not completely “self-made” in that she didn’t accomplish everything on her own, but that by definition she was.
“If they’re just talking finances, technically, yes, I don’t have any inherited money,” she said. “But I have had a lot of help and a huge platform.”
Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had a number of controversies over the years. Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
Elon Musk has had a number of controversies over the years, including being charged with fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2018.
Not only did Musk smoke marijuana on camera in the last decade, but the Tesla and SpaceX founder also found himself in hot water when the SEC charged him with fraud in September 2018. He had claimed on Twitter he was considering taking Tesla private and that he had “funding secured”, causing shares of the carmaker to fall more than 13 per cent.
The billionaire settled the case for US$40 million in fines and stepped down as chairman while retaining his position as CEO.
The SEC also filed a complaint in May 2019 after they claimed Musk had violated his securities fraud settlement after providing “inaccurate information about Tesla to 25 million people” on Twitter. The billionaire had tweeted out Tesla would be manufacturing “around 500,000” cars in 2019 – which went against Tesla’s own predictions for 2019.
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the US House Financial Services Committee during an Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors hearing in Washington D.C., the US, on October 23, 2019. Photo: Liu Jie/Xinhua
Mark Zuckerberg faced criticism after 2018 comments about Holocaust deniers’ posts on Facebook, as well as the social network’s mishandling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook, as well as its CEO Zuckerberg, have both come under fire in the last couple of years over user security concerns and fact-checking on the social media platform. Zuckerberg was criticised in July 2018 after the CEO said he didn’t think Facebook should take down posts from Holocaust deniers because he didn’t think they were “intentionally getting it wrong”. After receiving outrage over his comments, Zuckerberg clarified saying: “I personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that.”
Zuckerberg was also scandalised when Facebook was fined US$5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after the social network was found guilty of mishandling user data. It is the largest penalty fine to ever be handed down to a technology company.
Jeffrey Epstein
US financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services’ sex offender registry March 28, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking charges and subsequent death by suicide in jail made international headlines in 2019.
The case of Jeffrey Epstein captured – and continues to enthral – Americans in 2019. Billionaire financier Epstein was arrested in July 2019 in New York City on suspicion of sex trafficking underage girls in the 2000s. The billionaire had previously evaded charges for child sexual abuse in 2007 after cutting a “secret deal” with then-US lawyer Alexander Acosta. Epstein was granted immunity from federal prosecution but pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and the procurement of minors for prostitution.
He served a 13-month jail sentence. However, according to The New York Times, the financier was reportedly allowed to work from his Palm Beach office six days a week.
As accusers spoke out against Epstein, the billionaire’s high-profile connections to US President Donald Trump, former US President Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew were also scrutinised.
According to reports, while being held at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center over sex trafficking charges involving girls as young as 14 years-old, Epstein allegedly died by suicide on the morning of August 10.
The scandal, however, is far from over as prosecutors and victims try to discover who, if anyone, could have also been involved in the alleged scheme. The case against Epstein himself has been dismissed.
Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter .
