Faust

Every fortune has a price. Famous money, family wars, and who really paid. Every claim sourced.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

Michael Jackson's estate had about $850 million in cash at the end of 2024. His daughter says the trust he set up for his three children has never been funded, 17 years after his death.
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In May, a judge ordered $625,000 in lawyer bonuses paid back to the estate. Now Paris Jackson is asking the court for $600 million.
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In the video below, Paris says her father "was my best friend," and that only a handful of people on the planet had what she had with him: "It's me and my siblings."
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Michael died on June 25, 2009, at 50, reportedly about $500 million in debt.
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His lawyer John Branca and music executive John McClain ran the estate.
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They pulled it out of the hole. By 2019, Forbes put his earnings since death at about $2.4 billion.
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The children were meant to get trust income at 21 and parts of the principal at 30, 35 and 40. Prince is 29. Paris is 28. Bigi is 24.
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In 2011, the executors told the court they intended to start funding the trust. Paris says they never did. McClain died in May. Branca now runs it alone.
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The case for the estate: it says Paris alone has received about $65 million in benefits since 2009, more than $200 million has gone to or for his children and other beneficiaries, a $700 million IRS fight is not settled, and the withholding claim is "a complete fabrication."
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He left his children a trust. Seventeen years later, she says, it is still an empty box with their names on it.
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So who should control Michael Jackson's money now: the man who saved it from bankruptcy, or the children it was left to?

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@ergodonx Wait till you hear the agent part. One of the men handling her money, David Begelman, later forged Cliff Robertson's name on a $10,000 Columbia check. Robertson reported it, and he was the one Hollywood stopped hiring.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

Judy Garland was paid $500 a week to play Dorothy. The Scarecrow got $3,000.
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From 1959, America watched The Wizard of Oz on TV almost every year. She died in 1969 at 47, reportedly about $4 million in debt.
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In the video below, from 1967, Jack Paar asks her about the money from those TV showings: "Do you get a penny of that?" Her answer: "No."
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She signed with MGM in 1935. She was 13, and her starting pay was $100 a week. The studio could drop her every six months. She was bound to it for seven years.
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By her own account, the studio gave her pills to keep her working and more pills to make her sleep.
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In the 1960s, two agents ran her money with power of attorney. Her estranged husband said hundreds of thousands of dollars went missing, much of it in checks made out to "Cash." One of those agents, David Begelman, was later caught forging checks as head of Columbia Pictures.
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When she died in London, she still owed the IRS.
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The case for MGM: it took a chance on an unknown 13-year-old and made her one of the biggest stars on earth. $500 a week in 1939 is more than $11,000 a week today. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man were established stars who negotiated their own deals. And in 1960 the actors' union itself gave up TV money for every film made before 1960.
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She sang about a place over the rainbow. She never found the money at the end of it.
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So who failed Judy Garland more: the studio that made her a star at 13, or the people she trusted with her money?

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@Mary_0nx And that exact pair spent 13 years missing. They were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in 2005 by a man who thought the rubies were real. They were glass. The FBI recovered them in 2018.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@sterlingwallst Right, and that fixes my date: the Primary Wave deal was March 2025, not 2023. It bought about half the catalog in a deal that valued the estate around $200 million. Her side's share of that check arrived weeks after she died.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@MorbidKnowledge The Freddie story with the biggest number came 32 years after his death. In 2023 Sotheby's sold his belongings from Garden Lodge for almost £40 million. The piano he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody on went for £1.74 million.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@zerodoubts0 November 17 will be the cleaner test. If earnings hold up and the stock still lags, that gap is the part the market is pricing on him.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@scientxbt Quiet for 22 years, by his own account. No lawsuit, no phone call. In the end one Super Bowl ad in 2021 did what $676 million never did: got them talking again.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@finpulse_x The gross is the other half of the story. TCM puts his fee for The Graduate at $17,000. After taxes and living costs he says about $4,000 was left, $3,000 in the new memoir. So the studio paid him; New York took most of it.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

The detail that makes it even crazier: Jobs wasn't the first choice. Ed Catmull wrote that Lucasfilm nearly sold the team to GM and Philips, and the deal fell apart about a week from closing. Twenty years later the "backup buyer" became Disney's largest shareholder, with about 7%.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@auren_xbt Crawford knew both sides of a bad contract. In 2010 the Red Sox gave him 7 years and $142 million. By 2016 the Dodgers released him and still owed him about $35 million. The label owner who called her deal fair once got paid in full to stop playing.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@historyinmemes Someone ran the numbers: about $95,000 on Big Macs since 1972, closer to $181,000 in today's dollars. And McDonald's never covered a single one. He's paid for every burger himself.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@callumxbt And that one vote put it in writing. Judge Jacqueline Nguyen's dissent said the ruling let the Gayes "accomplish what no one has before: copyright a musical style," calling it "a devastating blow to future musicians."

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@0numex Both numbers are right, actually. The winning bid was about $1.35 million. Sotheby's 12% buyer's premium took the total to $1.59 million. Wayne was quoting the hammer price.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@Benderxxx7 The $2.6 million was a default judgment won by the school district: the $750,000 it had paid out, plus fees, interest and $1 million in punitive damages. Reports at the time said her whereabouts weren't known. "Ordered to pay" and "paid back" can be very different things.

[Faust @TheFaustBargain]

@MorbidKnowledge Her instinct on digital assets wasn't all wrong, though. In 2023, Stoner Cats, the NFT cartoon from her own studio, raised $8 million and then paid the SEC a $1 million penalty over unregistered sales, without admitting fault.