The Most Bizarre Things That Heirs To Famous Companies Did With Their Money

Christina Onassis inherited her wealth from both sides of her family. Her maternal grandfather Stavros Livanos founded the Livanos shipping empire, while her father Aristotle Onassis amassed the world's largest privately owned shipping fleet. Tragically, Onassis lost her entire immediate family in a span of less than 30 months: Her brother Alexander perished in a plane crash in 1973; her mother died - possibly from a drug overdose - in 1974; and her father passed in early 1975. 

After his son's passing, Aristotle Onassis had started to groom Christina to take over the family business. She had already inherited the majority of her mother's estate, which was estimated at $77 million, and upon her father's demise, she received 55% of his fortune - estimated to be around $500 million. (The remaining 45% went toward establishing a foundation in her brother's name.)

Although she successfully ran the family business until her own passing in 1988, Onassis struggled with her personal life. She was married and divorced four times, was diagnosed with clinical depression, and was said to have given money to her friends just to try and convince them to hang out with her.

One of these people was Luis Basualdo, who Onassis put on her payroll, paying him $30,000 a month. For several years Basualdo and his girlfriend would accompany Onassis most everywhere she went, and basically were in charge of deciding who Onassis would or wouldn't see.

How did one of the heirs to the Seagram's liquor fortune get tangled up with what the federal government has described as a "dangerous sex cult?" It all started when Clare Bronfman got involved with NXIVM  after learning about the group from her sister, Sara.  

Led by a man named Keith Raniere, NXIVM billed itself as a self-help organization and was based near Albany, NY. Bronfman had been involved with the organization for well over a decade when the federal government started investigating the secretive group after a 2017 New York Times article detailed how some women were coerced into having sex with Raniere as "collateral" for becoming members of the group. 

The Bronfman sisters were not only members of NXIVM, but also financed many of the group's actions. They arranged for the Dalai Lama to come visit (a move that helped to raise Raniere's profile), provided a private jet that was used to try and recruit celebrities to the group, and Clare bought an island in Fiji that Raniere and other NXIVM officials used as a retreat.

Their father opposed their involvement with NXIVM, which he described as a "cult" in a 2003 Forbes article, but while Sara became less and less involved with the group after marrying and having children, Clare remained a passionate supporter. As Raniere's chief legal aid, she spent approximately $50 million of the sisters' fortune to finance and file multiple lawsuits against Raniere's (real and imaginary) enemies. She also formed two non-profit organizations to try and spread the organization's ideas.

After Raniere was arrested on a range of federal racketeering charges, including identity theft, money laundering, and sex trafficking, his lawyer unsuccessfully attempted to get him released from jail by offering a federal judge a $10 million bail package. Some believe the offer was financed by Bronfman. 

The heiress was arrested on conspiracy and racketeering charges in July 2018 and saw her bail set at $100 million. In April 2019, she pled guilty to charges of conspiring to hide and harbor an undocumented immigrant for financial gain and fraudulent use of identification. She also agreed to forfeit $6 million to the federal government and ended up being sentenced to 81 months in prison. Meanwhile, Raniere was convicted of seven felonies and in October 2020 was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

In 2017, a horror movie titled The Evil Within finally got released, some 15 years after production on the film had begun. The film starred Frederick Koehler, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Michael Berryman. Originally titled The Storyteller, the film was written and directed by oil heir Andrew Getty - the grandson of J. Paul Getty - who largely self-financed the project. The plot reportedly was based on the nightmares Getty had as a child.

In 2015, Ryan Readenour, a post-production producer on the film and friend of Getty's, told People:

When [Getty] was young he would have these really powerful, sick, twisted dreams, and [they were] so shocking to him that he didn’t think they came from him. He had this idea it was this "storyteller" who was creating these crazy dreams of his, and that was kind of the genius of the [film’s] story.

Filming began in 2002 and was shot largely in Getty's own home. Although it was budgeted at around $4 million, Readenour told People that Getty spent closer to $6 million of his own money on the project, even selling his prized AC Cobra sports car to help fund the project. But he ended up blowing much of the budget on unnecessary purchases. 

"He bought millions of dollars worth of equipment instead of renting it," Readenour claimed. "He had all these trucks, cameras and lenses. The people around him didn’t advise him the right way."

Filming dragged on for five years, the shoot hampered by disagreements between Getty and the cast, health issues, and Getty's own perfectionism. Even after production wrapped, the oil heir spent several more years working on his labor of love, converting one of the rooms in his mansion into a post-production suite where he would work on elaborate special effects.

Sadly, he never got to see the end result of his work. Getty was found dead in his Los Angeles mansion in March 2015. His death was ruled to be caused by a hemorrhaging ulcer brought on by a long history of recreational meth use.

Michael Luceri, who edited and helped produce the film, stepped in to complete it after Getty's passing, then Vision Films secured the distribution rights.

Writing for Birth.Movies.Death, Brian Collins described the final film as "a trainwreck like no other."

Barbara Hutton, who was dubbed "Poor Little Rich Girl" by the media, was, through her mother's side of the family, an heiress to one-third of the Woolworth fortune. Her father, meanwhile, co-founded the investment banking and stock brokerage firm E.F. Hutton. By the time of her 21st birthday in 1933, Hutton had an inheritance worth about $50 million, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.

When she had her debutante party at age 18 in 1930, it became a national scandal because of the high cost of the party ($80,000) at a time when the Great Depression had just begun to devastate the United States. Hutton even had to leave the country for a while in order to avoid the reporters.

Hutton's fifth husband, Porfirio Rubirosa, was previously married to Hutton's great rival and fellow heiress Doris Duke. Hutton wrote Rubirosa a check for $1 million shortly after they were wed, but the marriage lasted just 53 days (he was having an affair with the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor the entire time). However, the brief length of the marriage didn't keep Rubirosa from receiving a divorce settlement that included polo ponies, a plane, $2.5 million, and a coffee plantation in the Dominican Republic.

Rubirosa was far from the only husband who made out well. Hutton's first husband cost her approximately $2 million, and her second around $1.5 million. Of her seven husbands, Cary Grant was the only one who didn't ask for or receive a settlement.

Aside from spending millions on her husbands, Hutton used much of her inheritance on jewels. Fascinated by gems from a young age (at age 16 she picked out a $50,000 ruby as a "gift" that her father gave her to convince her to accompany him on an overseas trip), she reportedly paid more than $1,000,000 in 1935 to purchase the Romanov emeralds (once owned by the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia) from Cartier.