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Michael Oher says the family from The Blind Side never adopted him. The movie made more than $300,000,000. The family says his share was about $14,000.
In the video below, released the day he went to court, he says what the movie got wrong about him.
He grew up in foster care in Memphis. In July 2004, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy invited him to live with them. He called them Mom and Dad.
That August, a few months after he turned 18, he signed papers. He says they told him it worked like an adoption.
It was a conservatorship. It gave them control over his contracts.
2009: The Blind Side comes out. Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar playing Leigh Anne. The Baltimore Ravens take Oher in the first round.
August 2023: Oher goes to court. His petition says the Tuohys and their two kids got $225,000 each, plus 2.5% of the movie's net proceeds. He says he got nothing.
"You let your guard down and then you get everything stripped from you," he later told The New York Times Magazine.
"We didn't make any money off the movie," Sean Tuohy told The Daily Memphian. "It was about $14,000, each."
Two days later, the family's lawyers put it at about $100,000 apiece, Oher's share included.
September 2023: a judge ends the conservatorship. "I cannot believe it got done," she said.
The case for the Tuohys: they took a homeless teenager into their home, and they say lawyers told them a conservatorship was the only option after 18.
$300,000,000: the movie.
$225,000 each, plus 2.5%: the Tuohys and their kids, his petition says.
$14,000: Michael, Sean Tuohy says.
A family that saved a homeless kid, or a family that signed his name away?
Scottie Pippen made $2,775,000 in the Bulls' last title season. Michael Jordan made $33,140,000. In November 1997, Scottie said he'd never play for Chicago again.
In the video below, recorded that week, watch his answer when they ask if he'd ever wear a Bulls jersey again.
He grew up in Hamburg, Arkansas, the youngest of 12 kids. His father couldn't walk after a stroke. One of his brothers was paralyzed.
June 1991. The Bulls win their first title. Scottie wants security for his family. He signs an extension for $18,000,000 that locks him in for seven seasons. His agents, Jimmy Sexton and Kyle Rote, told him not to.
Then NBA money explodes. Salaries jump every year. His stays flat.
January 1995: he asks to be traded. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf refuses to reopen the deal. He tells the Chicago Tribune that Scottie had promised him: "You'll never hear from me."
"I know he's underpaid. Sometimes I make good deals and sometimes I make bad deals," Reinsdorf says.
1997: GM Jerry Krause keeps shopping him in trade talks. Coach Phil Jackson says Krause told him: "I don't care if it's 82 and 0 this year." It would be Jackson's last season no matter what.
Scottie pushes his foot surgery into the season. He misses 38 games.
"There were moments when it was upsetting," he told The Guardian in 2020.
January 1998: he comes back with no new contract and wins his sixth ring. A year later Houston gives him five years and about $67,000,000.
The case for the Bulls: he signed the deal, promised never to complain, and sat out nearly half a title season over it.
6 titles: the Bulls.
$33,140,000: Michael Jordan.
$2,775,000: Scottie, sixth on his own team.
Was he holding the Bulls hostage, or finally charging them what he was worth?
Billy Joel says his manager took $30,000,000 from him. The manager was his ex-wife's brother and the godfather of his daughter. A judge awarded him $2,000,000.
In the video below, filmed while the case was still in court, the manager's wife says who she really blames.
Frank Weber took over from his sister Elizabeth as Joel's manager. Joel gave him power of attorney and made him godfather to his daughter, Alexa Ray.
Then Joel married Christie Brinkley. She saw Frank buying racehorses and property.
"I said to Billy, 'Frank Weber's ripping you off.' And he did not want to hear that," she says in HBO's And So It Goes. "He trusted him more than he trusted me."
Summer 1989: an audit. Joel fires Frank in August.
September 1989: Joel sues for $90,000,000. The suit says Frank double-billed him for music videos and mortgaged his song copyrights without telling him.
"I found out I didn't have any of the money I should have. It hit me like a ton of bricks," Joel says in the HBO film.
"This whole thing ... is an effort to avoid paying Frank royalties on the upcoming LP and tour," Frank's lawyer, Daniel Gecker, told People.
March 1990: a judge awards Joel $2,000,000 in a partial ruling. Frank files for bankruptcy, and the case ends in a settlement no one disclosed.
The case for Frank: his side said Joel approved the loans at their regular meetings, and Frank says he won back the rights to Joel's songs.
$30,000,000: missing, Joel's lawsuit says.
Racehorses and property: Frank, Christie Brinkley says.
$2,000,000: Billy, in the first ruling.
A brother-in-law who robbed him, or a brother-in-law pushed out by Billy's new wife?
Lionel Messi says he signed whatever his father gave him. A Spanish court found those papers hid €4,100,000 from the tax office. He got 21 months in prison.
In the video below, he explains it in 2013. Three years later in court, a lawyer asks him one question about his dad.
His father, Jorge, has run his money since he was a child.
2007 to 2009: the money from his Adidas, Pepsi and Danone deals runs through companies in Belize and Uruguay. Spain's tax office says €4,100,000 in taxes was never paid.
June 2013: the case goes public. That August, the family pays €5,000,000 back, interest included.
The public prosecutor asked to drop the charges against Lionel. The lawyer for the tax office refused.
June 2, 2016: father and son sit side by side in a Barcelona court.
"He is my father and it obviously never crossed my mind that he would fool me," Messi tells the judge.
"I didn't think it was necessary to inform him of everything," his father says.
"It's like a crime boss," the tax office's lawyer, Mario Maza, tells the court. "At the very top is the bigwig who doesn't want to know about the details."
July 2016: 21 months each. His ignorance "does not remove responsibility," the judge writes.
May 2017: the Supreme Court upholds it. Jorge's term drops to 15 months for paying the money back.
July 2017: a court swaps the prison time for a fine. €400 for every day. €252,000 for Lionel.
The case for Jorge: he says advisers told him the setup was legal, and he paid it all back before any trial.
€4,100,000: unpaid on his image rights, the court found.
15 months: Jorge, who ran the money.
21 months: Lionel, who says he knew nothing.
A son who trusted his father, or a superstar who chose not to know?
Britney Spears's father paid himself $16,000 a month out of her money. Her lawyer says she got $2,000 a month less than he did.
In the video below, filmed in 2008, she explains why she's afraid to be happy. She had 13 years left.
February 2008: after two hospital holds in one month, a Los Angeles court puts her father, Jamie, in charge of her life and her money.
October 2008: the judge makes it indefinite.
She goes back to work. New albums, world tours, four years of Las Vegas shows.
From 2009, Jamie pays himself $16,000 a month from her estate. Plus $2,000 a month for an office. His own court filing lists both.
He also took a share of her tour and Las Vegas money, The New York Times reported.
December 2020, to CNN: "I love my daughter and I miss her very much."
June 23, 2021: she finally speaks to the judge. "My dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship... should be in jail," she says.
His lawyers answered with numbers. "He has taken the estate from being in debt and facing tens of millions of dollars of lawsuits to a current value of well over $60 million," his filing said.
Her lawyer answered with other numbers: about $6,000,000 to her father, more than $30,000,000 to lawyers, all from her estate.
September 2021: the judge suspends him. November 2021: the conservatorship ends.
The case for Jamie: he took over a star in crisis and an estate in debt, and handed back $60,000,000.
$60,000,000: her estate.
$16,000 a month, plus $2,000 for the office: Jamie.
$2,000 a month less than him: Britney.
A father who saved his daughter's fortune, or a father who paid himself from it for 13 years?
Prince Harry says his father cut him off in 2020 and stopped taking his calls. Six months later, Netflix signed him for a reported $100,000,000.
In the video below, recorded a year later, Oprah has to stop him mid-sentence. Then he says what kept his family going in between.
January 2020: Harry and Meghan announce they are stepping back as senior royals. By March 31 they are out.
The calls with his father ended fast. "I had two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls," he told Oprah.
Then the money. Harry says the support ended "in the first quarter of 2020."
California, a baby son, no royal income, and a security bill he says he now had to pay himself.
September 2020: Netflix signs their company Archewell. He says the streaming deals were "never part of the plan."
June 2021: Charles's office publishes its accounts and says he kept paying.
"The Prince of Wales allocated a substantial sum to support them with this transition. That funding ceased in the summer of last year," Clarence House said.
Harry's team answered that he meant the UK financial year, which starts in April.
The case for Charles: his son quit the job, and he still paid for months after he left.
$100,000,000: Netflix, reported.
"A substantial sum": Charles, until summer 2020.
2 phone calls: Harry.
A father who stopped paying a son who quit, or a father who went silent when his son needed him most?
Jim Carrey's father lost his job at 51. The family moved into a van. Years later, Jim put a $10,000,000 check in his father's casket.
In the video below, recorded more than 15 years later, he tells it himself, and says why the check had to go with his dad.
Percy Carrey could have been a great comedian, Jim said in a 2014 commencement speech. He took a safe job as an accountant instead.
When Jim was 12, the safe job let him go.
The family lived in a van for a while. Jim and his brother cleaned a tire factory after school, 8-hour shifts.
At 15, his dad drove him to his first stand-up gig in Toronto. Jim bombed.
Around 1990, broke in Los Angeles, Jim parked above the city and wrote himself a check. $10,000,000 "for acting services rendered." Dated Thanksgiving 1995.
He kept it in his wallet for years. "It deteriorated and deteriorated," he told Oprah in 1997.
Then came 1994: Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber. Three hits in one year.
His dad lived to see The Mask. Then he died.
At the funeral, Jim slipped the check into his father's pocket.
51: Percy's age when the safe job let him go.
$10,000,000: the check Jim wrote himself.
His father's pocket: where it ended up.
You finally make the money your dad never had. Do you bury the proof with him, or keep it?
Sylvester Stallone was making $36 a week as an usher. Studios offered him up to $360,000 for his Rocky script. He said no.
In the video below, he tells Graham Norton why, and what the man who bought his dog wanted to give it back.
It was the mid-1970s. He wrote Rocky himself, and the studios loved it.
They just didn't want him in it. They wanted Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford. Bankable names.
Stallone refused to sell unless he played Rocky. He had no savings and a wife at home.
So he sold the one thing he had left: Butkus, his bullmastiff. "One of us doesn't eat," he says.
Then the studio gave in. They made Rocky on a small budget with an unknown in the lead.
The first thing Stallone did with the money was go back for his dog. The new owner refused to give him back.
The case for the new owner: he paid for the dog fair and square, and his kids loved him.
Rocky won Best Picture. Butkus played Rocky's dog.
$36 a week. $360,000 turned down.
You make $36 a week and someone offers you $360,000 to walk away from your own script. Do you take it?
Colonel Sanders sold KFC for $2,000,000 in 1964. 7 years later, the buyers sold it for $285,000,000.
He started franchising at 65. By 1964 he had 600 restaurants and nobody to run them.
John Y. Brown Jr., a young Kentucky lawyer, and Jack Massey, a Nashville investor, offered $2,000,000 and a salary for life. He took it.
The case for the buyers: Brown says the Colonel later bragged to his Rotary Club that he took two city slickers for $2,000,000.
> 1966: KFC goes public.
> 1968: 864 new restaurants in one year.
> July 1971: Heublein buys KFC for $285,000,000. 3,500 restaurants.
A Dallas TV crew found him the next day.
“Do you feel you got left out?”
“I’m left out, that’s right.”
Worked out.
> $2,000,000 in 1964.
> $285,000,000 in 1971.
> 142 times more in 7 years.
> The price grew about $40,000,000 a year.
> His starting salary: $40,000 a year.
He called their new gravy “wallpaper paste.” They fought him over his own name. In 1974 he sued for $122,000,000. He settled for $1,000,000.
Keep this part. You sell a company once. The buyer keeps every year after it.
A reporter asked if his chicken made him a wealthy man. The clip is 40 seconds. Watch him answer, then decide.
Two city slickers who fleeced an old man, or an old man who got exactly the price he asked for?
Sequoia partner Jim Goetz emailed Jan Koum for months. Koum never wrote back.
Less than 3 years later, Sequoia's $60 million in WhatsApp was worth $3 billion.
Koum didn't need investors. A Ukrainian immigrant who once stood in a food stamps line, he hated meetings. His app charged $1 a year and spent $0 on marketing. A note on his desk read "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!"
April 2011 - Sequoia finally got in with $8 million. No other VC ever did.
February 19, 2014 - Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. 450 million users. 32 engineers.
Koum signed the deal on the door of his old welfare office.
Sequoia: about $60 million in, about $3 billion out. 50x.
In 2025, WhatsApp started showing ads. Both founders were long gone.
In the video below, investor and founder tell it together, on one stage:
> The Ignored Emails (8:21):
- Goetz admits Koum wanted nothing to do with investors. "My initial emails were rebuffed without a reply."
> The 5-Minute Stare (9:05):
- First coffee. Koum didn't smile for 5 minutes. Goetz thought he'd lost.
> The Investor He Didn't Need (10:17):
- The paid iPhone app already covered servers and salaries. Koum picked his investor.
> The 75 MPH Night (22:55):
- 2:30 a.m., the night before signing. Koum's tire blows out at 75 mph. "He almost died that night."
Did Sequoia protect the no-ads dream, or sell it to the biggest ad machine on earth?
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar took $6,700,000 from Benchmark in June 1997. He put it in the bank and never touched it.
By spring 1999, Benchmark's 22% was worth $5,000,000,000.
Here is the part most founders miss. eBay didn't need the money.
Omidyar launched it on Labor Day weekend 1995 as a side project. Within 9 months, it paid him more than his day job. The site made money almost from the start.
Investors kept knocking. He picked Bob Kagle at Benchmark for one reason - they promised to find eBay a real CEO.
So he sold 22% of a profitable company for help, not cash.
March 1998 - Meg Whitman leaves Hasbro to run a company of about 30 people.
September 24, 1998 - eBay goes public at $18 a share. It nearly triples on day one.
April 1999 - Benchmark's stake passes $5,000,000,000.
$6,700,000 in. $5,000,000,000 22 months later. About 750x on a check eBay never spent.
In the video below, Omidyar explains what he did with the money.
We're taught startups raise money because they run out of it. eBay raised money it never needed.
So who got the better deal: the fund that turned $6,700,000 into $5,000,000,000, or the founder who gave up 22% to land the right CEO?
Peter Thiel turned $500,000 into $1 billion. Then he sold 20 million Facebook shares at $20 each - shares worth over $10 billion today.
In summer 2004, Facebook was a college site run by a 20-year-old. Most investors saw a dorm project. Thiel saw a network every student would join.
August 2004. Thiel wrote a $500,000 check for 10.2% of the company. That valued Facebook at $4.9 million.
The deal had a catch. The money only turned into stock if Facebook hit 1.5 million users by the end of 2004.
Facebook missed the target. Thiel converted anyway.
May 2012. Facebook went public at $38. Thiel sold 16.8 million shares for $640 million.
The same day, he locked in a plan to sell most of the rest the moment the lockup ended. Any price.
August 2012. The stock had crashed to $20. He and his funds sold 20 million shares anyway, for $395.8 million.
Total cash out: just over $1 billion. A 2,000x return.
The case for Thiel: he walked away with $1 billion from one $500,000 check. Nobody calls that a mistake.
In the video below, he tells how he became Facebook's first investor.
A genius who locked in 2,000x, or the man who left $10 billion on the table?
Dave Chappelle has a $50 million contract on the table.
Then someone on set laughs at the wrong moment.
It's 2005. Chappelle's Show is the hottest thing on TV, and Comedy Central wants more.
He's filming a sketch. A crew member laughs, and the laugh feels wrong.
"It was the first laugh I've ever been uncomfortable with," he later told Oprah.
Soon after, he gets on a plane to South Africa. He never comes back to finish the season.
Hollywood calls it a breakdown. Everyone says he threw away $50 million.
"I wasn't walking away from the money. I was walking away from the circumstances."
For 11 years, he releases zero stand-up specials.
November 2016: Netflix pays him $60 million for 3 specials. More than the deal he walked out on.
Then, in 2020, he learns Comedy Central is licensing his old show to Netflix and HBO Max. He gets nothing.
"They didn't have to pay me because I signed the contract."
So he asks his own fans to stop watching his own show.
They do. Netflix pulls it.
February 2021: "You made that show worthless... I got my show back and they paid me millions of dollars."
We're taught to never leave money on the table.
Chappelle left $50 million on it. Then the table came back to him.
The clip is a minute. Watch him tell Oprah why he left, then decide: did he throw away $50 million, or buy his freedom?
In 1992, Prince signed the biggest music contract ever written - $100 million - and within three years he was fighting to get out of it.
He saw what the fine print gave away. Warner Bros was not just buying six future albums. They were taking ownership of every master he had recorded since 1978.
On August 31, 1992, he signed the six-album deal worth a reported $100 million. Bigger than Madonna. Bigger than Michael Jackson. The largest solo contract in history.
Then he understood what he owned of his own music. Nothing.
The timeline:
> 1992 - signs the deal, his hand shaking as he writes his name.
> 1993 - changes his name to an unpronounceable symbol, hoping a contract cannot bind a man who is no longer Prince.
> 1994 - starts appearing in public with “SLAVE” written on his cheek.
> 1996 - finishes the six albums fast and leaves Warner.
> 2014 - signs a new deal and finally wins his masters back.
He turned the most famous name in music into a protest sign to make one point.
The result: it took Prince 22 years, from 1992 to 2014, to get back the masters he signed away for $100 million.
If you do not own your masters, your master owns you.
Taylor Swift’s first six albums sold for $300 million in 2019. She could not buy a single one of them.
So she decided to make them worthless.
Swift wrote the songs. She never owned the master recordings - the actual studio tapes. When Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings bought her old label Big Machine in 2019, he got the masters. She was shut out of the one asset built from her own voice.
Most people would have sued, or complained, or moved on. Swift did the math instead.
The timeline:
> 2019 - Braun buys Big Machine for $300 million. Taylor’s masters are part of the deal.
> November 2020 - Braun sells those masters to Shamrock Capital for a reported $300 million. She is locked out a second time.
> November 2020 - Swift announces she will re-record all six albums, note for note.
> 2021 to 2023 - she drops four “Taylor’s Version” records. Fans switch to the new ones. The old masters start bleeding value.
> May 2025 - Swift buys back every original master from Shamrock for a reported $360 million.
She now owns all of it. The songs, the videos, the concert films.
The asset she could not buy in 2019 only reached her after she built the thing that made it worth less.
If you cannot own it, you can out-create it.
In 2009, boxing put the richest fight in history on the table. Floyd Mayweather looked at it and said no.
Everyone wanted Mayweather vs Pacquiao. The two best fighters alive, both in their prime. Talks collapsed over drug-testing terms, and the public picked its villain.
“He’s scared.” “He’s ducking Manny.” For five years that was the story. Floyd the coward, too afraid to risk his perfect record.
Floyd let them talk.
He understood something the crowd did not. The fight was worth more unmade than made. Every year of waiting stacked the demand higher. A bout in 2010 breaks records. A bout after five years of hunger breaks the sport.
So he waited. And when the deal finally closed, he owned it. 60 percent of everything.
May 2, 2015. MGM Grand, Las Vegas. 4.4 million homes paid around $100 to watch. The live gate hit $72 million, a record. Total revenue cleared half a billion dollars.
Then the fight started. And it was dull. Twelve rounds, no knockout, a tired decision. Pacquiao fought with a torn shoulder. The crowd that waited five years felt robbed.
It did not matter. Floyd walked away with roughly $250 million for 36 minutes of work.
The crowd thought patience was fear. He was just letting the price grow up.
In 1984, Michael Jordan did not want Nike. He wanted Adidas. His mother put him on the plane anyway, and that flight became worth over $1.3 billion.
He was a rookie, not a legend yet. Converse and Adidas already had their stars and saw him as just another draft pick. Nike was the underdog, desperate to sign one.
Jordan refused to even take the meeting. Deloris Jordan, his mother, made him go listen.
What Nike offered, no rookie had ever seen. Not a flat fee, but his own signature shoe and a cut of every pair sold.
> Summer 1984, Beaverton, Oregon. Nike puts $500,000 a year on the table for five years. Triple the richest sneaker deal of the era.
> His mother adds one clause: royalties on every pair sold.
> Nike projects $3 million in Air Jordan sales over four years.
> Year one alone does $126 million.
> The NBA bans the shoe. Nike pays the $5,000 fine every game and turns the ban into an ad.
Today Jordan Brand clears over $5 billion a year for Nike. Jordan himself has pulled an estimated $1.3 billion from a $500,000 deal.
The talent was his. A paycheck pays you once. A percentage pays you forever.
Mike Tyson made over $400 million in the ring. By 2003 he filed for bankruptcy, $23 million in debt.
He could earn $30 million in one night. What he never built was the wall between earning and keeping. Money came in faster than anyone could count, and it left just as fast.
At 20 he became the youngest heavyweight champion in history. By the late 1980s he was worth close to $300 million. The checks kept coming. After his return in 1995, he pulled $30 million per fight, four fights in a row.
Then look at where it went.
$4.5 million on cars and motorcycles. 19 of them bought for friends.
$400,000 on pigeons and Siberian tigers.
Mansions he barely lived in. Lawsuits, back taxes, an entourage on payroll.
$13.4 million owed to the IRS alone.
In 2003 he filed Chapter 11. The man who earned more than almost any athlete alive was officially broke. Over $400 million through his hands, $23 million in the hole.
The talent that made the money was never the talent that keeps it. Nobody taught him the second one.