Behind every billionaire there is a story!

How To Lose A Billion Bill Bartmann amassed a huge personal fortune building a wildly profitable company. Too bad it was all on paper.

here is the great article from 1999 about Bill Bartmans spectacular demise

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Only a year ago Bill Bartmann was one of the richest people in America, 80% owner of an insanely profitable company that bankers valued at as much as $6 billion. He traveled with a coterie of armed bodyguards, entered a Las Vegas arena in a sedan chair to wrestle Hulk Hogan, became one of the nation’s top political donors, and even had a state holiday named after him. “I have enough money,” Bartmann boasted in 1997, “that if I set it all on fire, I’d be dead before it went out.”

read the rest published by Fortune here:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/10/25/267811/index.htm