The topmillion who asked for interest after his grandson's ransom

A businessman with a huge wealth was accompanied by luck, and virtually everything he had touched. Perhaps that is why members of a well-organized crime gang could have thought in 1973 that they would get easy, fast money to kidnap the 80-year-old businessman's grandson. They couldn't have been mistaken.

J. Paul Getty III, 16, lived in Rome at that time, as his father, J. Paul Getty II, formerly the leader of the family oil company in Italy. The kidnappers sent a letter to the teenager's mother, claiming $ 17 million ($ 6.5 billion at today's exchange rate). The robbers threatened to prove their intentions with a cut finger, but for a while many people thought only the boy was trying to cheat money from his family.

His parents believed that their child was in great danger, but they didn't have that much cash, so they turned to the billionaire grandfather.

-If I pay now, just a single penny, I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren – This is how old Getty snapped his son.

But the kidnappers did not bluff: they cut off one of the boy's ears and sent it to an Italian newspaper with one hairpin, and a photo of another newspaper was posted on the mutilated Paul. At the same time, the criminals were « cautious » for bargaining, demanding only $ 3 million ($ 1.15 billion), which was acceptable to the grandfather. But there was a little problem: he could only get $ 2.2 million ($ 847.5 million) out of his tax base, and he refused to pay more than one dollar. But he found a solution: he lent the remaining 800 thousand (308.2 million) to his son with an interest rate of 4 percent.

After five months of bondage, Paul was released in extremely poor physical and mental state. The authorities arrested nine criminals, but only two were prison, the others, including the Calabria mafia boss, were acquired. The elderly Getty finally explained his astonishing behavior to the public: According to him, if he had immediately inserted his waist, he would have encouraged the underworld figures to kidnap his other grandchildren, and ultimately led to the spread of violence.

However, this was hardly comforted by the shattered boy: although he was married and had a child, he was struggling with severe alcohol and drug problems throughout his life. At the age of twenty, he also received a stroke due to an overdose, which made him paralyzed, could not speak and partially blind Finally he died in 2011, 54 years old.

The older Getty's reputation has hardly been done: in 1966, the world's richest man became $ 1.2 billion ($ 462.1 billion), which at the time of his death in 1976, to $ 2 billion ($ 770 billion), was not willing to pay a few million for his grandson. His notorious stubbornness, as if Moliere's work was the protagonist of the misery, was later supported by other stories. According to his direct subordinates, he hadn't even thrown a piece of asparagus to see if it would be good for packaging and washed his underwear for himself. In fact, he installed only phones with coins on his estate so that his employees and guests would not call his account.

But he shared the steepest story himself. When his rich father died, he left only a small fortune to his son, and his widow received his most valuable oil shares. J. Paul Getty then threatened his mother with a lawsuit, who eventually sold her share.

– I managed to decide my mother He boasted in an interview years later.