OKhym

Fame, money, betrayal — the stories nobody tells twice

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Every July 1, the New York Mets pay Bobby Bonilla $1,193,248.

He last played for them in 1999.

The payments will continue until 2035.

In the video below, hear the agent who made this deal explain exactly how he did it.

In 2000, the Mets wanted to release Bonilla and owed him $5.9 million for the year he wouldn't play. His agent, Dennis Gilbert, suggested something unusual.

Instead of taking the $5.9M in cash, defer it. Add 8% interest a year. Start payments in 2011. End them in 2035.

The Mets agreed. They thought they'd make more than 8% investing the money with their fund manager.

Their fund manager was Bernie Madoff.

Madoff was arrested in December 2008 running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The money the Mets were going to use to cover Bonilla's deferral was gone.

The payments started anyway, on July 1, 2011.

Over 25 years, Bobby Bonilla will collect about $29.8 million from the Mets. For a year he didn't play. On a team he hasn't been on for 26 years.

Every July 1 is now known as Bobby Bonilla Day. He has become more famous for the deal than for any game he played.

$5.9 million in 2000. $29.8 million by 2035.

Would you take the cash now — or the deal that keeps paying?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Dame Miriam Margolyes was renting out her holiday cottage in Dover.

Then the police raided it.

A Liverpool drug gang had been using it as a helicopter drop-off point for cocaine. About £13 million worth.

She was in her seventies. She had been a Harry Potter star for a decade. She is now a Dame of the British Empire.

A reporter asked how she felt about the raid.

"I could get more for it."

She wasn't angry. She wasn't shocked. She was genuinely annoyed she hadn't charged more rent.

In the video below, hear her tell Graham Norton the whole story — and watch the audience realize she's serious.

Margolyes has spent 60 years in film: Dickens adaptations, Blackadder, Age of Innocence, Harry Potter. She has given hundreds of interviews. She has become famous for one thing almost no other working actor in Britain will do.

She says what she thinks.

She has talked openly about who she won't work with, what she thinks of the royal family, how much she's been paid, and what her agent has advised her not to say.

She owns the cottage the cocaine went through. She still rents it out.

Just for more now.

One Dover cottage. £13 million in cocaine. One Dame.

Did Miriam Margolyes get taken — or did she just notice what everyone else won't say out loud?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@Zarnvex $700B wiped because one guy was sleeping with the wrong woman. and this is your AI revolution.

[OKhym @OKhymo]

For 14 years, Arnold Schwarzenegger lived in a house with his wife, his four children, and a fifth child he never acknowledged.

The fifth child's mother made the family's beds.

In the video below, watch Arnold say the words he had spent fourteen years refusing to say.

Mildred Baena worked as the Schwarzenegger family housekeeper for over 20 years. In 1996 she became pregnant. She told her husband the child was his. In October 1997 she gave birth to a boy, Joseph.

She kept her job. She brought her son to work with her.

For the next 14 years, Joseph grew up in the same house as Arnold and Maria Shriver's four children. Arnold was governor of California for seven of those years. Maria was first lady. The Kennedys came over for holidays.

Nobody said anything.

In 2011, Maria noticed Joseph had started looking exactly like Arnold. She confronted Mildred. Mildred confessed. Maria filed for divorce.

Arnold's political career ended within weeks.

Joseph Baena is now 29 — a bodybuilder in Los Angeles. He trains at Gold's Gym in Venice, the same gym Arnold used in the 1970s. He looks exactly like his father did at that age.

Arnold and Maria's divorce took ten years to finalize.

The case for Arnold: he confessed when confronted. He has supported the child. He has written publicly that it was the worst mistake of his life.

The case against: the mistake lasted 14 years and happened inside his own house. Maria raised another woman's son without knowing it.

The man who built his life on looking people in the eye looked past one for 14 years.

Did Arnold's confession make it right — or just make it public?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Shaquille O'Neal turned down a $40 million Reebok deal.

So his sneakers could sell for $19 at Walmart.

In the video below, hear Shaq explain the reasoning in a single sentence he's repeated for 30 years.

Reebok offered Shaq $40 million to wear their shoes and build a signature line. Nike and Adidas were in the same range. The signature-shoe business was built on one model: expensive sneakers, massive margins, kids begging their parents.

Shaq said no.

He went to Walmart and signed a deal to sell basketball shoes under his own brand — Dunkman — starting at around $19. He accepted smaller profit per pair. He gave up his cut of a billion-dollar industry.

Over the years, he says, he's sold more than 400 million pairs.

Shaq's math: at $19 a pair, a kid working a summer job can buy the shoes himself. At $190 a pair, his mother takes a second shift.

The case for Shaq: he was already rich from the NBA. $40 million from Reebok was gravy. He traded it for respect in every neighborhood he grew up in.

The case against: $40 million is $40 million. He left it on the table in principle, when the same money could have gone to his family, charities, investors. Principle is expensive when other people depend on you.

The man who could have charged $190 chose $19.

Did Shaq give up $40 million — or change what he was willing to charge for?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@Zarnvex fair. but the method sets a precedent louder than the verdict — any billionaire can quietly bankroll a lawsuit against anyone they don't like now. we just saw how long thiel was willing to wait

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Hulk Hogan sued Gawker for $140 million. He won.

He thought he was fighting them alone. He didn't know a Silicon Valley billionaire had been quietly paying his lawyers for five years.

In the video below, hear Peter Thiel admit on camera that he paid for it.

2012. https://t.co/CSe2MLm1TD posted a leaked sex tape of Hulk Hogan with his best friend's wife. Hogan sued for invasion of privacy.

2016. A Florida jury awarded him $140.1 million. Gawker filed for bankruptcy within weeks. The site that had led digital media for a decade was gone.

Five months later, Forbes broke the second half of the story.

Peter Thiel — PayPal co-founder, early Facebook investor, Silicon Valley billionaire — had been funding Hogan's entire legal team for five years. Around $10 million total. Hogan didn't know. His lawyers didn't tell him.

Thiel's reason: in 2007, Gawker ran a post titled "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people." He had not come out publicly. He later called it one of the darkest periods of his life.

He waited nine years and bought the lawsuit that ended Gawker.

The case for Thiel: Gawker built a business on humiliating private people. A billionaire funding one of their victims is just litigation finance — same as any insurance.

The case against: when a billionaire can quietly bankroll a lawsuit until a newsroom goes bankrupt, every reporter now has to ask who they might be offending with nine figures in the bank.

The wrestler got the verdict. The billionaire got the newsroom.

Was this justice finally finding Gawker — or the day a billionaire figured out he could buy the end of a newspaper?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Belle Delphine sold her own bathwater for $30 a jar.

The internet thinks she made millions. She made closer to nothing.

In the video below, hear her tell Louis Theroux what the $30 jars actually paid her.

July 2019. 19 years old. She listed jars of "GamerGirl Bath Water" on her website. Hundreds sold in three days. Every tabloid ran the same headline that week: "teenager gets rich selling her bathwater."

The real number was $90,000.

PayPal froze every transaction, closed her account, and held the money. She says they also fined her $2,500 per sale. By her math, the fines wiped out the sales.

PayPal wouldn't tell her which rule she broke. Her answer: "PayPal doesn't allow sex workers to use their platform."

They gave the $90,000 back in May 2024 — five years later. By then she didn't need it.

The stunt had already done its real job. Her name was searched tens of millions of times that week. Instagram banned her. She opened an OnlyFans in late 2020. Within a year she was reportedly earning seven figures a month.

She didn't sell the water. She sold the story about the water.

Today she lives on a horse farm she paid for in everything that wasn't bathwater.

The case for Belle: she was 19, selling a joke. PayPal taking $90,000 from a teenager because they don't like the industry is the real scandal.

The case against: she knew exactly what PayPal would do. The attention was the product all along. The jars were a prop.

Was Belle Delphine a marketing genius — or just the first person to notice the attention was worth more than the water?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Mia Khalifa was paid $12,000 for her entire career in pornography.

She worked in the industry for three months. She became the most-searched performer on the planet — and has stayed in the top 20 for eleven years since.

She hasn't seen a dollar of that in a decade.

In the video below, hear her tell BBC what the $12,000 bought — and what it cost.

Mia was 21, broke, new to the United States when she signed her first contract. She says she didn't understand what she was signing. She couldn't take her videos down. She couldn't negotiate royalties. She couldn't stop her name from being searched millions of times a month, every month, for eleven years running.

Three months in, she wore a hijab for a scene.

ISIS put her on a kill list. Her family stopped speaking to her. She moved cities. She changed her hair. She stayed famous anyway — for the thing she wanted to undo most.

She walked away from the industry in 2015. The industry did not walk away from her.

She spent the next ten years rebuilding what she could own: an OnlyFans she controls, a podcast, a sports commentary brand, her name on her own terms.

She is now a multimillionaire from everything that isn't porn.

In her own words: "I was paid $12,000 for an entire career. I have to live with that decision for the rest of my life. The industry is still making money off of it. I never will."

Twelve thousand dollars for the name. Eleven years of royalties for everyone else.

The case for the industry: she signed the contract. She was an adult. The money and the risks were on the page.

The case against: a 21-year-old broke and alone in a new country, offered $12,000 and a contract she couldn't read her way out of, is exactly who the industry is set up to find.

Did Mia Khalifa get $12,000 — or did she just not know yet what she was worth?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Freddie Mercury died in his boyfriend's arms.

He left everything to his ex-fiancée.

In the video below, Freddie explains why — in a single sentence he repeated in interview after interview.

Mary Austin was 19 when she met Freddie. They were engaged by 1973 and lived together for seven years. In 1976 he told her, privately, that he was bisexual. They never dated again. They stayed closer than anyone else in his life, until the day he died.

Jim Hutton was Freddie's partner for the last six years of his life. He bathed Freddie. Dressed him. Held his hand at the end.

The Kensington mansion Garden Lodge. Half the Queen royalties. The lion's share of a £20 million estate. All to Mary. By name.

Jim got £500,000 and permission to live in a cottage on the property until he died. He wrote a book called "Mercury and Me." He died of cancer in 2010.

Mary Austin still lives in Garden Lodge. 35 years later.

Freddie, in his own words: "The only friend I've got is Mary. To me, she was my common-law wife."

Six years at his side got Jim a cottage. Seven years in his life, two decades earlier, got Mary the mansion.

The case for Freddie: Mary knew him before Queen, before Freddie Mercury even existed. She was there when he was still Farrokh Bulsara — a shy immigrant kid hauling bags at Heathrow airport. Nobody else saw that person.

The case against: the man who loved him through dying got the back cottage. The friend he hadn't dated in 15 years got the mansion.

Was Freddie keeping a promise, or breaking one?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Jennifer Lopez's love life in 60 seconds.

8 relationships. 4 marriages. And one man who showed up twice.

Wait for the ending.

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Mike Tyson earned $400 million as a boxer.

By 37, he was $23 million in debt. On the list of bills he couldn't pay: $200,000 a year to feed his tigers.

In the video below, Mike's first wife tells Barbara Walters what living with Mike was really like — while he sits next to her, barely awake.

Tyson earned his first million at 18. By 20, he was the youngest heavyweight champion in history. By 30, he had made more money than any boxer alive.

Then came the receipts.

Three Bengal tigers — and $200,000 a year to keep them.
A bathtub worth more than most people's homes.
Mansions in three states he barely slept in.
Jewelry and cars he couldn't name a year later.
A monthly phone bill that outearned most of his cornermen.

In 2003 the IRS was owed $13 million. His second ex-wife, $9 million. His promoter Don King, another $100 million.

He filed for bankruptcy at 37.

The case for Mike: he was a Brooklyn kid handed hundreds of millions at 20. Everyone around him got paid first.

The case against: nobody made him buy the tigers.

Did Mike Tyson blow $400 million — or did everyone around him?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@janetsummers240 5 kids cut out at once makes you wonder whose fault it really was

[OKhym @OKhymo]

Tony Curtis died in 2010 with $60 million in the bank and five living children. Not one of them got a cent.

Five months before he died, he sat down and rewrote his will. He named each of his five kids — Kelly, Jamie Lee, Allegra, Alexandra, Benjamin — and crossed every one of them out on purpose.

All $60 million went to one person: his sixth wife, Jill Vandenberg. He had known her the shortest of anyone in the room.

In the video below, hear what Jamie Lee did instead of suing — in her own words.

Her siblings challenged the will in court. Jamie Lee didn't. When she finally spoke about her father, she said she loved him, and that he had loved her the way he could.

Six marriages. Five children. One widow. $60 million to the one he'd known the shortest.

The case for Tony: Jill was there every day as he faded. The ones who stay in the room are the ones who inherit.

The case against: naming each of your five kids by name five months before you die, just to cross them out, isn't a will. It's a message.

Was Tony Curtis making a point — or making a mistake?

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@JosHern20026188 ¿justo incluso tachándolos por nombre meses antes de morir? duro

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@TheShoeLady33 crossing each name out one by one was ice cold

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@DewiSan97497335 wild detail, makes cutting out janet's kids even colder

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@Awake2759 not suing over $60m takes some restraint tho, nepo baby or not

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@kevinrobert1965 100%, that wasn't estate planning, that was a final word

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@cashprinter5000 hard to argue when all 5 get cut at once

[OKhym @OKhymo]

@MarceloBelgica su plata sus reglas, aunque tacharlos uno por uno fue brutal