you are there at the bottom, it feels like as soon as you rise to the top or, as they

say, become ultra-successful, you are never going down again.

Once you build a successful company or make a series of astonishingly profitable investments,

even a few million dollars can set you on a path to be financially free for the rest

of your life. But a few hundred million dollars should not only provide you with a luxurious

life for your remaining days here on earth, but also to your children and grandchildren.


 But there is another segment in our society

that can afford everything they want. Their wealth exceeds the wealth of some nations.

Jeff Bezos, has as much wealth as Greece's current GDP. Billionaires are in the best

period of time in history. The average billionaire has a net worth of 4.1 billion dollars. Given

the markets average, if they would receive an 8 percent return on their wealth, a typical

billionaire can earn over 328 million dollars a year, enough cash to provide anyone with

super luxuries life. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, its as difficult to manage so

much money as its to get it in the first place. Some people managed to become billionaires

but couldn't maintain it to the point where they had to sell all of their assets and file

for bankruptcy. Today we are going to explore 5 billionaires who are now officially broke.


 Number 1, Bernard Madoff

He started a brokerage firm back in the 1960s and grew it into one of the largest investment

firms. At one point, Madoff Securities was the largest market maker at the NASDAQ, and

in 2008 was the sixth-largest market maker on Wall Street. The company went to provide

a different kind of financial services. At his peak, Madoff had a net worth of 17 billion

dollars until people realized that it was all a scam. It was the largest Ponzi scheme

in world history and the largest financial fraud in the history of the U.S.

He would attract investors by paying great profits to early investors with funds from

more recent investors. No one could resist such profits and ended up investing billions

into his firm. 


On December 10, 2008, Madoff's sons told authorities that their father had confessed to them that

the asset management unit of his firm was a massive Ponzi scheme, and quoted him as

saying that it was "one big lie". The following day, FBI agents arrested Madoff and charged

him with fraud. The SEC had previously conducted multiple investigations into his business

practices but had not uncovered the massive fraud. In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty

to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive

Ponzi scheme. He defrauded thousands of investors. The amount missing from his client accounts

was almost $65 billion. Madoff ended up sentenced to 150 years in prison.


 Elizabeth Holmes 


 This woman was named the next Steve Jobs,

way before Elon Musk was as popular as he is today. She founded Theranos and claimed

to have revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly

small blood volume, such as from a fingerprick. Holmes raised $6 million to fund the firm.

By the end of 2010, Theranos had more than $92 million in venture capital. She was the

real deal. In 2014, she appeared on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times. Forbes recognized

Holmes as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire and ranked her #110 on the Forbes

400 in 2014. Theranos was valued at $9 billion and had raised more than $400 million in venture

capital. She was everywhere, giving speeches alongside

other billionaires such as Jack Ma to inspire others, but that was probably the peak of

her career. In 2015, a series of journalism and investigators

revealed doubts about its technology claims and that Holmes had misled investors and the

government.  In 2018, the SEC charged Holmes with deceiving

investors by "massive fraud" through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of

the company's blood-testing technology; Holmes settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine,

returning 18.9 million shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos,

and being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.

Despite having raised more than $700 million from investors, the company is now on the

verge of bankruptcy, and Forbes estimates her net worth at zero dollars. 

Jocelyn Wildenstein 


You probably know here for here extensive cosmetic surgery that ended up in her catlike

appearance, but for some reason, she even denies having plastic surgery. But that's

not what we want to know. Though she didn't come up with any brilliant idea to become

super-wealthy, she took a different path. She married Alec Wildenstein, who was a billionaire,

but not self-made. When his father passed away in 2001, he inherited half of his father's

business empire that estimated to worth 10 billion. Seems like an easy way to become

a billionaire. Not really!  In 1999, his wife Jocelyn Wildenstein divorced

him and received 2.5 billion dollars in her settlements and $100 million each year for

the following 13 years. But, you know what happens when you don't

earn your billions with your blood and sweat? You waste it faster than you get it. She was

known for her extravagant lifestyle. Her telephone bill alone was $60,000 a year. She uses to

spend on food and wine $500,000 annually. She spent money like there is no tomorrow

but when tomorrow came in knocking, she realised that she had more debt than she can possibley

cover and ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2018.


4. Allen Stanford Stanford first started a bodybuilding gym

that failed. His first success in business came from speculating in real estate in Houston

after the Texas oil bubble burst in the early 1980s; he made a fortune buying up depressed

real estate and selling it years later as the market recovered.

But that wasn't enough for him, he wanted more and went to found Stanford Financial

Group. He got into the banking the indstry. Business was booming, his net worth reached

2.2 billion dollars at its peak because he continuously delivered higher returns to his

investors than market's average which made his business look a bit more suspicious. 

When pitching to investors, he presented hypothetical investment results as actual historical data

in sales pitches to clients and claimed his certificates of deposit were as safe as, or

safer than, U.S. government bonds. But it was leaked later on that companies

under Stanford's control were "rumored to engage in bribery, money laundering, and political

manipulation". Seems that's what Allen Stanford meant by a safe investment. So in 2009, Stanford

became the subject of several fraud investigations and was charged with fraud. His billion-dollar

idea got him 110-year sentence prison, which he is still serving.


 5. Eike Batista

This man, once upon a time, was the 7th richest person in the entire world. Yes! You heard

it right! He was one of the few richest people on the entire planet. The question that I

want to know an answer is - how do you you go from being worlds 7th richest human to

being broke? Here is the recipe. In the 1980s, Batista

created and put into operation eight gold mines in Brazil and Canada, a silver mine

in Chile, and three iron ore mines in Brazil. From 2004 to 2010 Batista built 5 companies,

each focusing on different parts of the production from mining to logistics. And things took

off in the beginning. In 2011, Batista was listed as the richest

person in Brazil and the most powerful person in the country, placing him as Brazil's most

powerful person after Brazil's then-president (Dilma Rousseff ). In early 2012, Batista

had a net worth of US$35 billion. 


Just when it seemed he is going to be at the top forever, things turned south. As of 2013,

due to falling commodity prices, none of his enterprises were profitable despite substantial

infusions of cash by the Brazilian government, and Batista was engaged in desperate efforts

to shed assets and meet the demands of creditors, which bankrupted his companies by 2014, he

was officially broke. He holds the record for having been the fastest destroyer of wealth.

He deserves it, comes on, from 35 billion dollars to zero, I didn't know if that's humanly

possible. 


Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson 


Björgólfur was Iceland's second businessman worth more than a billion dollars. At one

time, he was the majority owner and chairman of the now nationalized Icelandic bank Landsbanki,

the second largest company in Iceland. He was ranked by Forbes magazine in March 2008

as the 1014th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $1.1 billion.

He started multiple businesses, including a beverage business in Saint Petersburg, back

in 1991. But his biggest move was when he gained 45% controlling share of Landsbanki,

which is what made him a billionaire. But he miscalculated his moves and didn't see

the banking crises that were on a horizon. In 2008, the industry collapsed and destroyed

the entire economy of Iceland. His debts rose to over 1.2 billion dollars, so he had to

file for bankruptcy. Forbes estimates his net worth today at $0.


  AND lastly, Patricia Kluge


 Its another woman who found her way to the

billionaires club through marriage. She married John Kluge, who was one of the richest men

in the entire country. The marriage worked out until his wife found out that she can

earn billions if she files for a divorce, so They divorced in 1990, leaving her one

of the nation's richest divorcees, according to Forbes, with assets including the grand

Albemarle estate in Virginia, which had an estimated value of around a billion dollars

back then. And that's the problem when you become a billionaire

through a divorce. You know nothing about the business. You either screw everything

on your own or someone around you would fool and rip you off. She thought she could turn

it into a profitable venture, but she was dead wrong, so she couldn't maintain her luxurious

life and ended up selling furniture and jewelry at auction in a bid to avoid bankruptcy. But

it didn't work. 



 Here is your list of the billionaires who

were at the top of the world and could afford anything their hearts desired but ended up

broke, bankrupt, and couldn't even pay the rent. So if you are thinking of becoming a

billionaire, here are important lessons. Be honest and don't build it by scamming people

or ripping off someone's wealth just because you were married to them.


 I hope you guys have enjoyed the video, and

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Thanks for watching and until next time.