croesus

old money stories, told simply

[croesus @croesusfiles]

Nigel Mansell won 9 of 16 races in 1992 and became Formula 1 world champion. Three days after he clinched the title, he says Williams asked him to take a pay cut, because Ayrton Senna would drive for nothing. A year later, Senna was charging McLaren $1 million a race.

In the video below, Mansell says the only thing he didn't get from Williams was a three-year contract, and that he "wasn't the first driver they did it to."

In 1990 he announced his retirement at Ferrari, after Alain Prost joined the team and Mansell lost his priority status. Williams talked him out of it.

He says he asked for guarantees on engines, fuel and testing money, plus three years. He got all of it except the third year.

In 1992 he took 14 poles and 108 points, and clinched the title in Hungary in August with five races still to go.

His contract ended that same season. Prost had reportedly already agreed to drive for Williams in 1993, and Senna wanted the seat badly enough to offer to drive for free.

Mansell says he had agreed terms with Frank Williams before Hungary, in front of a witness. Then the call came: he'd have to take "considerably less" than he was earning that year.

On September 13 at Monza, aged 39, he read out a statement retiring from F1, citing "circumstances beyond my control." Just before the press conference, Williams told him they now accepted his original terms. He read it anyway.

The second half of the clip is a 1992 interview with a man who says he'd been negotiating with Williams himself. Many people blamed that for Nigel leaving. "From inside, it is not," he says. The reasons go back "months and months."

Senna didn't get the Williams seat for 1993 either. He stayed at McLaren, which could only guarantee him $5 million, and drove race by race: $16 million for the season. Martin Whitmarsh later said it was the only year in his 24 years there that McLaren lost money: £1.5 million.

I think the third year is what cost Mansell. A three-year deal would have run through 1993. Instead his contract ran out the season he won, so he had to negotiate as champion against a rival offering to race for free.

One of his 1992 Williams chassis, which he won five races in, later sold at auction for £2.7 million with fees.

Was Mansell right to walk away as champion, or did he overplay his hand?

I post one old money story every day, told simply.

[croesus @croesusfiles]

@EdwardLon69 cheap enough to keep £336k cach in the attic

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Ken Dodd was the biggest comedian in Britain, and he told the taxman he lived on £3,500 a year. Investigators found £336,000 in cash in his attic, his wardrobes and under the stairs. He was acquitted, and it still cost him about £2 million.

In the video below, Dodd has just been cleared. Asked what happens now, he says he has "only ever wanted to be a comedian" and will "go on trying to do that." Then the clip cuts to him on stage, joking about income tax.

In 1965 he played the London Palladium for 42 weeks, the longest comedy run the theatre had ever seen.

He liked being paid in cash. He said it was so he could pay his support acts.

Some of that cash went into suitcases and onto planes to Jersey and the Isle of Man. The prosecution said he deposited £406,000 offshore, and with interest it grew to £777,453.

In 1989 he went on trial in Liverpool on eight charges of tax fraud covering 15 years.

He treated the witness box like a stage. "I'm a comedian, not a book-keeper," he told the court. When he blamed part of his trouble on his accountant's death, the prosecutor asked if that really mattered. "Well, it mattered to him."

His barrister told the jury: "Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants." The jury acquitted him.

But he had promised to pay around £825,000 in tax whatever the verdict. With legal fees, the bill came to an estimated £2 million. A Channel 4 documentary later said the trial left him virtually bankrupt.

He went straight back to the Palladium and opened his act with: "Good evening, my name is Kenneth Arthur Dodd; singer, photographic playboy and failed accountant!"

I think the jury believed the simplest thing he said about himself: he was a comedian, not a book-keeper. Being hopeless with money got him acquitted. It didn't get him a refund.

He died in 2018 at 90, two days after marrying his partner of 40 years. He left her £27.5 million, and as his wife she paid no inheritance tax on it.

Was Ken Dodd an honest man who was hopeless with money, or did Britain's best comedian talk his way past the taxman?

I post one old money story every day, told simply.

[croesus @croesusfiles]

Molly Bloom says she made $4 to $6 million a year in tips from the poker games she ran for Hollywood stars. One of the men paying into her table was a hedge fund manager running a $25 million Ponzi scheme. When it came apart, the winners were sued to give money back, and her own bank accounts were frozen.

In the video below, she's asked if she really saw someone lose $100 million in one night. "Yes." Then she adds: "I can't guarantee $100 million." Her cut came from the winners, who tipped "1 to 5% of their wins."

Bloom trained for years to make the Olympic ski team and got hurt trying to qualify. She moved to Los Angeles for a year off before law school and ended up running a high-stakes game for A-list actors.

The names she's willing to say on camera: Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio. She says the rest were heads of investment banks, movie studios and politicians.

She says she even threw out Dan Bilzerian for posing as a "clueless trust fund kid" to take everyone's money. Her words to him: "You're bad for business."

The player who brought it all down was Bradley Ruderman, a Beverly Hills hedge fund manager. His fund was a Ponzi scheme, and he is said to have lost $5.2 million of it at poker. He got 10 years in prison.

A bankruptcy trustee then sued 22 people to claw the money back. Tobey Maguire had won $311,000 from Ruderman and paid $80,000 to settle, without admitting wrongdoing. Bloom was sued too.

She moved to New York and, she says, became "the biggest game runner in New York City." Then Italian organized crime wanted "a piece." She declined. She says a man came to her apartment, put a gun in her mouth and told her: "I think your answer will be different next time."

In April 2013 she was charged in a federal case against a gambling ring with ties to Russia and Ukraine. She pleaded guilty, got probation and forfeited $125,000. She later said the government seized all her money and the IRS came after her for taxes.

I think the tips were the smartest part of her business and the most dangerous. She never had to win a hand. She only needed rich people to keep losing. But when your income is a cut of other people's losses, you can't check where their money came from, and Ruderman's came from his investors.

Her book became Molly's Game, with Jessica Chastain playing her.

Was Molly Bloom the real winner at that table, or the one who paid for everyone else's losses?

I post one old money story every day, told simply.

[croesus @croesusfiles]

Kevin Spacey was paid $500,000 an episode to play Frank Underwood in House of Cards. In June 2024 Piers Morgan asked how much money he had left, and he said: "None." Six months earlier, the studio that won $31 million from him had cut the bill to $1 million.

In the video below, Morgan walks him through it. Why is his house being foreclosed? "Because I can't pay the bills that I owe." How much does he owe? "Many millions, yes." He says there were "a couple of times" he thought he would have to file for bankruptcy.

At $500,000 an episode and 13 episodes a season, House of Cards paid him about $6.5 million a year. He moved to Baltimore for the show and in 2017 bought a 9,000-square-foot pier home there for $5.65 million. The mortgage was more than $20,000 a month.

Later that year the studio, MRC, wrote him out of the show. In 2020 an arbitrator found he had broken its sexual harassment policy and ordered him to pay nearly $31 million. With interest it grew to about $36 million.

That was a contract case. A New York civil jury found him not liable in 2022, and a London jury acquitted him in 2023.

With no show, he fell behind on the house. By December 2022 he owed $3.9 million on it. In July 2024, a month after this interview, it sold at a foreclosure auction for $3.24 million.

The $36 million is the strange part. In December 2023 MRC agreed to take $1 million, paid as 10% of his after-tax income. In return he handed over his medical records and agreed to testify. MRC wanted to argue his rehab diagnosis was a "sickness" covered by its insurance, and went after the insurer for around $100 million.

In March 2026 the jury sided with the insurer. Spacey had testified he was ready to keep filming.

I think the $31 million is the number everyone quotes and the one that mattered least. It was cut to $1 million in 2023. By his own account, what drained him was the slower math: "very little coming in and everything going out."

In November 2025 he told The Telegraph he was living in hotels and Airbnbs. In early 2026 a judge ruled the auction buyer had defaulted, so on paper the Baltimore house was still his.

What really cost Spacey his money: the $31 million judgment, or seven years of legal bills with nothing coming in?

I post one old money story every day, told simply.

[croesus @croesusfiles]

@JoaoVitorStuchi Maybe, but the fight here was about money, not pace

[croesus @croesusfiles]

Nigel Mansell won 9 of 16 races in 1992 and became Formula 1 world champion. Three days after he clinched the title, he says Williams asked him to take a pay cut, because Ayrton Senna would drive for nothing. A year later, Senna was charging McLaren $1 million a race.

In the video below, Mansell says the only thing he didn't get from Williams was a three-year contract, and that he "wasn't the first driver they did it to."

In 1990 he announced his retirement at Ferrari, after Alain Prost joined the team and Mansell lost his priority status. Williams talked him out of it.

He says he asked for guarantees on engines, fuel and testing money, plus three years. He got all of it except the third year.

In 1992 he took 14 poles and 108 points, and clinched the title in Hungary in August with five races still to go.

His contract ended that same season. Prost had reportedly already agreed to drive for Williams in 1993, and Senna wanted the seat badly enough to offer to drive for free.

Mansell says he had agreed terms with Frank Williams before Hungary, in front of a witness. Then the call came: he'd have to take "considerably less" than he was earning that year.

On September 13 at Monza, aged 39, he read out a statement retiring from F1, citing "circumstances beyond my control." Just before the press conference, Williams told him they now accepted his original terms. He read it anyway.

The second half of the clip is a 1992 interview with a man who says he'd been negotiating with Williams himself. Many people blamed that for Nigel leaving. "From inside, it is not," he says. The reasons go back "months and months."

Senna didn't get the Williams seat for 1993 either. He stayed at McLaren, which could only guarantee him $5 million, and drove race by race: $16 million for the season. Martin Whitmarsh later said it was the only year in his 24 years there that McLaren lost money: £1.5 million.

I think the third year is what cost Mansell. A three-year deal would have run through 1993. Instead his contract ran out the season he won, so he had to negotiate as champion against a rival offering to race for free.

One of his 1992 Williams chassis, which he won five races in, later sold at auction for £2.7 million with fees.

Was Mansell right to walk away as champion, or did he overplay his hand?

I post one old money story every day, told simply.

[croesus @croesusfiles]

@KurtMeyer1940 that fits what Mansell says, he wasn`t the first

[croesus @croesusfiles]

@BrianBurk440 As a rookie too, and Williams called him back in 1994.