Multimillionaire Spent Minimally as His Guardians, Trustees, Lawyers & Others Got $50M

Ugo di Portanova is still worth about $65 million.

But the partially incapacitated Texas man has lost about $50 million, since he was first stripped of control of his money in 1967, in the form of fees and other distributions paid out to dozens of Harris County Probate Court-appointed guardians, trustees, attorneys, accountants and bankers, reports the Houston Chronicle.

In the last year alone, some $4.5 million of his money has been spent to litigate a battle royale between three trustees and three court-appointed guardians, as each group essentially argued that the other was squandering di Portanova's assets, the Chronicle recounts in a detailed article.

"A lot of people are making a lot of money off of him," an unidentified former trustee tells the newspaper.