Robert Kiyosaki's Paper Trail: Est Seminars, LLC Bankruptcy and $1B Debt

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Robert Kiyosaki was born in 1947 in Hilo, Hawaii, to a family of Japanese descent. His sister became a Buddhist nun ordained by the Dalai Lama. His father, Ralph Kiyosaki, rose to become Hawaii's superintendent of schools, but in 1970 he ran for lieutenant governor as a Republican, lost, lost his job, and then sank his life savings into an ice cream franchise that went bust. The episode presents that collapse as the root of Kiyosaki's distrust of credentials and salaried work. He nearly failed high school, graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy as a deck officer, and flew helicopter gunships for the Marine Corps in Vietnam. In 1977 he launched Rippers, selling nylon and Velcro surf wallets, which went bankrupt, then took a sales job at Xerox to master selling.

In the 1980s he and a partner took over Money and You, a San Diego seminar built on Erhard Seminars Training methods, and expanded it internationally until a 1993 Australian documentary aired attendees' accounts of psychological distress and he left the business in 1994. He turned to books, and his 1997 blockbuster sold nearly 40 million copies by 2017. Legal and financial trouble followed: a 2008 lawsuit from his business partner of 10 years, settled for an undisclosed sum, and the 2012 bankruptcy of Rich Global LLC. He now calls gold and silver God's money, promotes cryptocurrency, and says he is more than $1 billion in debt, which he calls the bank's problem.

• Rich Global LLC was ordered to pay nearly $24 million in speaking fees and filed with nearly $26 million in liabilities and under $2 million in assets.
• His company's CEO said Kiyosaki did business through at least 10 corporate entities, which shielded his other assets.
• A 2010 CBC undercover documentary found that trailer park investments pitched at his seminars were barren, unused plots of land.
• His first book, in 1993, advised parents to steer children away from college and toward real estate.
• He co-authored books with Donald Trump in 2006 and 2011 and endorsed him in 2016.