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If I were Filthy Rich
By L_STrust
+35 Suppose a hypothetical $1 billion Powerball jackpot winner was to invest the lump sum on his own. Let’s also hypothesize that after 7 years, his investments have done so well, he is now worth $30 billion. How likely are news outlets and investigators to find out about his past?

For the sake of argument, let's suppose that the Powerball jackpot won in January 2016 ($1.5 billion) was won by a single person: a 21-year-old college student. After realizing he’d won, he hires a fiduciary at a reputable law firm, who then claims the ticket through an LLC.

After receiving the after-tax amount of $450 million, the lucky winner decides to form a family office and hires another law firm to create multiple shell companies and anonymous trusts by using the $400 million to invest in Ethereum, Nvidia Corp, Tesla, and Enphase Energy. I chose these because they have performed spectacularly in the past 6-7 years.

Assuming he never sold anything until 2023, he’d be worth somewhere in the ballpark of $30 billion at just 28. He would also be one of the single largest holders of Ether. Let’s also hypothesize that, since 2016, the winner has built a reputation as a ‘crypto investor’ and fund manager, and claims that the ‘seed money’ came from his business partner’s inheritance and that it was around $20 million.

Acknowledging the fact that it would be far too disingenuous to credit his ‘skills’, he attributes most of his success to the 2020-2021 rise of tech stocks and cryptocurrencies, but never mentions winning the lottery. Given that it would be disastrous to his public image if someone were to find out the truth, how difficult would it be to conclusively prove that this individual is, in fact, a lottery winner, given that

  1. The ticket was won and claimed (anonymously) in a state in which the winner does not reside in
  2. No one knew exactly the true extent of his wealth until about 2 years after winning
  3. The LLC that his lawyer used to claim the ticket was dissolved at his behest
  4. He has been interviewed by multiple news outlets and is a well-respected figure in many social circles
  5. He has no professional background in any field and has never indicated of possessing any sort of special ability, something that a 'self-made billionaire' would assuredly display

Recent responses

+64 @Arnie_Grape He would probably make a really detailed post on Reddit and blow his whole cover.

+40 @TheLizardKing89 I’d think he has a time machine. Turning $400 million into $30 billion in just 7 years would require a return of like 90% per year. That would be unprecedented in the world of investing, regardless of the source of the seed money.

+24 @Cocoasprinkles Private wealth is private

+15 @daisymaisy505 This is really well thought out. However, I would have to say that a journalist researching this person might figure it out.

+12 @audacesfortunajuvat There are literal books of new and old money, family trees and genealogies even in the United States. You can claim to be whatever you want but look at how quickly the George Santos thing comes apart under scrutiny, or even Elon Musk. He can be a billionaire all day but with no pedigree he’s not going to pass - he didn’t go to the right schools, know the right people, have anyone able to vouch for him, and he’d have to have some sort of investing firm that somehow made the money in the first place, all of which would leave a significant paper trail. I mean, you can search every LLC in my state like you search Google, for free, online. But even if somehow he was able to hide ALL that and just come up blank, rich people don’t hang out with people they haven’t vetted and there are 1,000 subtle symbols of wealth and pedigree that you’d struggle to learn in two years of devoted study even if you had nothing else going on in your life. There’s little things, like knowing which fork to use, but also all sorts of other shibboleths like clubs, social events, vacation spots, even tailors, bankers, and brands that you haven’t even heard of. It’s not easy to pass, at all, by design. If you didn’t go to a handful of elite schools, aren’t members at a couple of prestigious clubs, and so forth, you will not make it past the front door with any amount of money. Perfect example would be the fact that the very discussion of money just doesn’t happen at all and no one would be so rude as to discuss how you earned it, or assume anything so crass as to presume you were still working for it in any way. These people do business and they have people who do the dirty work of actually touching money. Like literally, they will make a deal and someone else then comes in to talk dollars and cents, I’ve never heard actually wealthy people discuss work or pay in any way. It’s beneath them, someone else handles that. So they’d probably be found out pretty quickly and even if they could hide the origin of the wealth the simple absence of a pedigree would make them ineligible for membership. Old money is almost more suspicious of new money than they are of poor people. I know a few dozen millionaires and a couple billionaires, hedge fund/sports team/major brand owners, and it’s a very tight club. They’d have no reputation that would be ruined by “only” being a lottery winner.