Meet The Former Billionaires Who Lost Their Billions

#3. Sean Quinn

Sean Quinn is an Irish businessman and conglomerateur. In 2008 he was the richest person in Ireland, but in 2011 he filed for bankruptcy. He began life in 1973 extracting the stuff out of his family farm and selling it to local builders. From this, he created Quinn Cement before his Quinn Group expanded into everything from building supplies to hotels, insurance to plastics.

It was a bank that took him down, he didn't invest in Anglo Irish Bank, he bet on it. Quinn chose a dangerous financial instrument called Contracts for Difference to build up a 25 percent stake in Anglo Irish Bank. But he lost more than five times his initial huge stake.

#4. Alberto Vilar

Alberto Vilar is an American investor and philanthropist from West Orange, New Jersey. Vilar is globally known as a generous donor to opera companies, performing arts organizations, and educational institutions in several parts of the world. His total contributions stood up to $250 million. By 2000, Vilar was claiming to be "the largest supporter of classical music, opera, and ballet in the world."

Through his investment firm, Vilar had been laundering money in addition to participate in investment advisor fraud, securities fraud, mail and wire fraud and was sentenced in February 2010 to nine years in prison.  The prosecution charged that some of the money stolen from his clients was used to meet his public philanthropic commitments.

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