Bernie Madoff, 1938 - Present (Jail)
He ran what might be the biggest fraud ever, totaling as much as $50 billion. Among his victims were several charities and people he claimed as friends. He and his wife have the yachts, cars, an exclusive Upper East Side apartment and other real estate holdings to prove it.
Dennis Kozlowski, 1946 - Present (Jail)
As CEO of Tyco International, he defrauded shareholders of more than $400 million. He once spent $6,000 in company funds on a gold shower curtain, and had the company pay half the $2 million price tag on his wife's birthday party, which featured toga-clad hostesses.
Ivan Boesky, 1937 - Present
Boesky made more than $200 million as an arbitrageur and inspired Oliver Stone to create Gordon Gekko, the Greed-is-Good character from "Wall Street." But it turns out he wasn't brilliant, just using inside info to shoot fish in a barrel.
Imedla Marcos, 1929 - Present
She saw it as her duty to provide "some kind of light, a star" for the impoverished Filipino people over whom her husband presided. So she took $5 million shopping sprees to New York and Rome, reportedly owned the world's largest collections of gems and 3,000 pairs of shoes.
Charles Ponzi, 1882-1949
He had an entire scheme named after him. Enough said.
Empress Dowager Cixi, 1835-1908
She started as a concubine but became the de facto ruler of China for nearly 50 years. She all but ran her son's empire until his death. Then she had her 3-year old nephew named emperor and kept him locked up so she could continue to run the show - for a profit. Cixi used the navy's money to build herself a marble banquet boat, aboard which she ate 150-dish dinners with golden chopsticks. She had 3,000 jewelry boxes; who knows how many jewels?
William M. "Boss" Tweed, 1823-1878
One of the original fat cats, Tweed weighed in at almost 300 pounds. Tweed used his Tammany Hall political machine to separate New York taxpayers from as much as $200 million (roughly $8 billion in 2009 dollars). His avarice was regularly lampooned in political cartoons of the day like this one by Thomas Nast.
William H. Vanderbilt, 1821 - 1884
He inherited vast wealth, built it into a whole lot more and lacked any sense of noblesse oblige. Arguably the most wealthy and powerful man of his time, he controlled the world's largest railroad network and became notorious for saying: "The public be damned!... I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody but our own."
Pope Sixtus IV, 1471
This pope (seated) greatly enriched himsel and his top cardinals (who may have been his sons) by licensing and taxing brothels and claiming he could retroactively get the troubled souls of dead people into heaven by selling indulgences to their living relatives. Oh, and he sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition, too.
Genghis Khan, 1162-1227
He wanted to own the whole world, and came closer to accomplishing that than anybody else, before or since. After his death, his kingdom stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic Sea.
Marcus Licinius Crassus, 115 BC - 53 BC
Crassus didn't need foreclosure proceedings to claim his real estate. This Roman general and supporter of Julius Caeser routinely increased his property holdings during "fire sales." During the city's occasional fires, he would arrive with his soldiers at a home that interested him and offer to buy the burning property for a song. Once the transaction was done, he'd put his minions to work dousing the flames. Crassus is depicted here ransacking the Temple of Jerusalem.
reference:stockwire.com
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