Sep 01, 2023
By: Deep Das BarmanWhile it is difficult to imagine that someone worth over a billion dollars could fall to $0 in no time, there are many such cases. Bad decisions, poor investments, debt, massive fraud, economic downturn and several others can contribute to a billionaire’s down...
Bernie Madoff was behind the biggest fraud in the history of mankind. Madoff’s net worth reportedly peaked in 2008 at $64.8 billion, according to Express UK. A March 2009 court filing found his net worth was at least $823 million. He was behind the longest-run...
Eike Batista was once the world’s seventh richest person, and in 2012 his peak net worth was estimated to be $30 billion, as per CNBC. The oil billionaire was the face of Brazil’s booming economy but his business started going downhill when his oil company, OG...
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was once on the cover of Forbes. Her company claimed to have invented a technology that could test for several diseases with just a few drops of blood, raking in investment worth millions. Theranos was valued at $9 bi...
Sam Bankman-Fried was the CEO of Alameda Research and the Cryptocurrency exchange FTX and had a fortune of over $26 billion in 2022, per Forbes. Most of his wealth was tied up in ownership of FTX and FTT tokens. His companies collapsed after allegations of f...
Chuck Feeney’s fall from the top is unique as it wasn’t due to anything bad. Feeney was the founder of Duty Free Shoppers, an airport retailer, and a private equity firm General Atlantic. His companies propelled his net worth to around $8 billion at his peak, ...
In 2010, Sean Quinn & family’s estimated net worth was about $2.3 billion, according to Forbes. The Irish businessman started with cement manufacturing and entered the hospitality industry. Quinn eventually went bankrupt because of the huge debt that his c...
Robert Allen Stanford gained and lost his fortune because of a ponzi scheme. At his peak, Stanford's net worth topped $2 billion, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He defrauded about 18,000 people and took over $7 billion. After his scheme was uncovered, ...
One of the most popular businessmen from India, Vijay Mallya once owned an airline, a liquor brand, and a Formula One team. The tycoon was famous for his luxurious and high-flying lifestyle which soon fell to ruins. At his peak in 2007, Mallya’s net worth was ...
The co-founder of major oil and gas company Chesapeake Energy, Aubrey McClendon was once worth $1.2 billion, per Yahoo Finance. His fortunes didn’t last long as in 2016, he was indicted on federal conspiracy charges for unfairly manipulating bids for drilling ...
The CEO of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers, was worth $1.4 billion when his company appeared to be a thriving telecom company in the late 1990s, per Celebrity Net Worth. However, it was later found that WorldCom’s profits were improperly recorded for the wrong year, ...