00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, March 5.
00:05 Today on Forbes, the billionaire and the con artist.
00:11 The email from a dead billionaire's secret son was promising.
00:14 The sender, a man who said his famous father had built the world's largest casino company,
00:20 the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, explained how he had a lot of information to share.
00:26 He wrote, "I should know. I am the biological son of Sheldon Adelson."
00:32 The first time the man who introduced himself as Sheldon Adelson Jr. telephoned,
00:37 it was from a Las Vegas area code.
00:40 Within minutes, he spun a wild yarn about how his ultra-rich father met his mother.
00:46 His father passed away in 2021, leaving a $35 billion fortune to his wife Miriam and his kids.
00:53 The father also left a global $10.3 billion in 2023 net revenue, casino empire,
00:59 with properties in Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore.
01:03 Here's how he began his story.
01:05 "My father was friends with Sumner Redstone, and in 1959, to be exact,
01:11 he stopped into Sumner's office and saw this beautiful Italian woman."
01:16 Redstone, who eventually became the billionaire chairman of Viacom and CBS,
01:20 had apparently told Adelson that the woman, his bookkeeper Anna Paradiso,
01:24 was a "lifesaver," but to "leave her alone," as she was divorced and had five kids.
01:30 The man continued in his nasally Boston accent,
01:33 "They had a five-year romance, and I was the product of that.
01:37 When they were expecting me, they had a conversation and agreed
01:40 that I would not be any responsibility to Mr. Adelson.
01:43 There are court documents to prove this."
01:46 He also said there is a birth certificate filed in Revere, Massachusetts
01:50 that would confirm that Adelson is his father.
01:53 Then Junior made a mistake.
01:55 He claimed he was Sheldon Adelson's only biological child.
02:00 While Adelson adopted his first wife's children, plus the children of his second wife,
02:04 he and Miriam had two children of their own, Adam and Matan.
02:09 Still, the man insisted that his father's friends would verify his story,
02:13 from Steve Forbes, the chairman of this publication,
02:16 to Steve Wynn, the billionaire co-founder of Wynn Resorts.
02:20 Both, however, said they had never heard of him.
02:24 But that shouldn't be too surprising,
02:26 because the real problem is that Sheldon Adelson Jr. doesn't exist.
02:32 The man who claims to be the late billionaire's namesake son
02:35 is in fact a convicted serial con artist named Roger Williamson,
02:40 who grew up in Revere, Massachusetts.
02:42 That detail was true, although the birth certificate he claims exists does not,
02:47 according to the city's Department of Vital Records and Statistics.
02:51 Williamson is a man with a long history of inventing identities and ripping people off.
02:55 He has gone by at least 11 different aliases,
02:58 and is described by multiple family members, ex-girlfriends, former landlords,
03:02 and other victims of his schemes as a compulsive liar who is, quote,
03:06 "not playing with a full deck of cards."
03:10 The Adelson family, through a spokesperson,
03:12 confirmed that they have known about Williamson for years,
03:15 but they are, quote, "not going to dignify the silliness of these claims
03:19 by providing specific answers to each of them."
03:22 In an email sent to Forbes, Leonard Adelson, Sheldon's brother, added, quote,
03:28 "I'm totally astonished that this man would make this claim."
03:32 He added that the whole thing is, quote, "outrageous and ridiculous."
03:37 When Williamson realized his scheme to make it into the pages of Forbes magazine
03:41 as the previously unknown scion of a billionaire wasn't working out,
03:45 he stopped returning calls.
03:47 In an email written from an address associated with a non-existent firm
03:51 called the Adelson Company, he tried to backpedal and wrote that the two previous
03:55 interviews he had given, quote, "must be from someone else. I don't know you."
04:01 For full coverage, check out Will Yakowitz's piece on Forbes.com.
04:07 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
04:11 [music]
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