How Gary Winnick, Once L.A.’s Richest Man, Went From Billions to Bust

In the late 1990s, Gary Winnick donated millions of dollars to the Los Angeles Zoo and rubbed elbows with President Bill Clinton. He would soon buy the most expensive home in the country.

The Long Island native and one-time protégé of the former junk-bond king Michael Milken had amassed an estimated $6.2 billion fortune, and the Los Angeles Business Journal ranked him the richest man in L.A. Global Crossing, a company he founded that promised to lay undersea fiber-optic cable around the world, made him a billionaire on paper in less than two years, a faster rise than Gilded Age oil baron John D. Rockefeller or Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.