Summary
- Donald Trump fell for a prank by cashing a 13-cent check from a satirical magazine called Spy, highlighting his willingness to cash even small checks despite his billionaire status.
- The prank involved sending increasingly lower-value checks to celebrities, and only two people, including Trump, actually cashed the final 13-cent check.
- Despite the embarrassment of falling for the prank, Trump's net worth is still estimated at $2.5 billion, although it has suffered due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his leisure industry assets.
Donald Trump is known for his business ways. He has had a number of different businesses, starting out in real estate, opening casinos, and even going on to become US President. While these businesses haven't always been successful, he has still been able to establish a billion-dollar net worth.
Given his decades-long success, one magazine decided to pull a prank on Donald and a few of New York's richest tycoons. Clearly, the prank might not have been taken as such by Donald, as he was one of the people who actually went so far as to cash the check, which was only worth 13 cents.
A Magazine Pranked Super-Rich Celebrities
The magazine in question was called Spy Magazine and was a satirical magazine that used to poke fun at celebrities. It ran from 1986 to 1998, with the prank in question taking place in 1990. However, they didn't just start out by sending out 13-cent checks, as the actual number was a little higher.
The premise of the prank was essentially to see whether celebrities who had been sent a relatively low amount via check would cash it in, despite them being worth millions—sometimes billions—of dollars.
When it was proved that they would do this, the magazine decided to keep sending new checks, with each check being increasingly lower than the last, to see how low a check would have to be before rich folks stopped cashing them.
Donald Trump Fell For The 13-Cent Check Prank
The first lot of checks was sent out by journalist for the magazine, Julius Lowenthal, who had set up a company called the National Refund Clearinghouse, with the first lot of checks being for $1.11. The checks were sent, along with a letter, to 58 celebrities, with the letter stating the check was for services they had been overcharged for.
Of these 58, only 26 of the celebrities actually cashed the checks. This led to Julius and the magazine becoming curious, so they sent out another check for 64 cents to those 26 people, with only half of them cashing the check this time.
Their last move was to send those 13 people a check for 13 cents, and this time the number of people who cashed the check was much lower, with only 2 people actually cashing it in.
The two celebrities who ended up falling for this 13-cent prank were Adnan Khashoggi (who was a Billionaire Saudi arms dealer) and Donald Trump. This means that they were the only people out of the original 58 who actually cashed all the checks that they were sent.
Obviously, as this was part of a prank, they weren't necessarily to know that this was a prank and given it had come from a company who seemingly had a reasonable enough excuse to send out those checks and there is always a possibility of having unknowingly overpaid for a service.
There is also the possibility that Donald has someone, or a team of people, who go through his mail for him to save him a bit of time from having to do this. It's highly probable that someone from his team could have seen the check, assumed it was legitimate, and cashed it in for him.
As it was a satirical magazine, the publication did poke fun at Donald for cashing such a low check. He was essentially painted out to be desperate for money despite being a billionaire (or a "demibillionaire" as the magazine referred to him at the time), however, it's obviously not known whether Donald cashed these checks himself or whether someone else had done it without him knowing.
Donald has never actually spoken out about this prank or why, no matter how many checks were sent, they kept on being cashed, so the reasons behind his actions are only speculation.
Donald Trump Is Worth $2.5 Billion
Despite having had a check cashed for a mere 13 cents in 1990, Donald Trump is now said to be worth $2.5 Billion. However, he disputes this number, saying that it changes all the time, depending upon how the markets are looking and what mood he's in that day.
He has been able to build up this net worth through a number of different methods, including his businesses, TV appearances, commercials, public speaking, and property development. However, it hasn't always been smooth sailing.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald had an estimated net worth of about $3.1 billion. However, as a lot of his assets are in the leisure industry, which was hit quite badly by the pandemic as people weren't allowed to use these facilities, it resulted in Donald losing a whopping $600 million.
Even for a billionaire, this is still quite a lot of money to lose, and saw his net worth drop from $3.1 billion to $2.5 billion. However, what might be an even bigger knock to Donald is that had he taken some advice to move his real estate assets in 2017, he could have been worth $7 billion today as he would have avoided the chaos that the pandemic caused.
