Oh, celebrities: they suck, yet we can't stop thinking about them. But who is truly the world's most worthless celebrity? Here at Heavy, we use science to answer these questions. Using a complex series of algorithms that monitor blog mentions, videos, and other Internet and media traffic, we have distilled the world's celebrities into an orderly list of 100 attention-seeking douchebags. Every day, we'll debut another entry on the list, counting down to the ultimate celebrity trainwreck.
The financial crash brought a number of scumbags to the nation's attention, but none captured our interest like this one. For over forty years, he served as head of his own firm and ran a fund that, no matter what the market was going through, delivered fantastic growth on investments. But even the best trader has bad days, and people started to get a little suspicious as early as 1999. In 2009, it was revealed that he actually had not been doing any trading or investment at all, simply paying returns with new money funneled into the fund. This is what's called a Ponzi scheme, and like all schemes it collapsed, robbing his investors of nearly $50 billion. When it was all coming down, this douche even tried to quickly pay out big bonuses to himself and his staff, only to be narced on by his own kids. Who's the financial trainwreck? Under the cut.
Yes, today's trainwreck is Bernie Madoff. Has a shyster ever had such an appropriate moniker? Bernard certainly made off with an insane amount of other people's money. He and his family spent over $100 million of the investments, robbing individuals like Larry King and Kevin Bacon as well as dozens of Jewish charities, which he targeted because he figured they'd be more likely to invest in a Jewish-owned fund. Forced to pay back all of his creditors, Madoff had $170 billion in funds seized and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. He currently shares a cell with a 21 year old drug dealer in Butner, North Carolina's Federal Corrections Complex. Still confused? Check out this video of Ernie and Cookie Monster explaining the situation.
