American billionaires

Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. With a net worth of US$6 billion as of 2022, he is among the richest people in the world.Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million (although his personal website claims $200 million) and permanently barred from the securities industry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
Since his release from prison, he has become known for his charitable donations. He is co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. A prostate cancer survivor, Milken has devoted significant resources to research on the disease.

Franklin Otis Booth Jr. (September 28, 1923 – June 15, 2008) was an American billionaire newspaper executive and investor. He was a Los Angeles Times executive and early investor in Berkshire Hathaway, which made him a billionaire. Booth was also a philanthropist and a great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, founder of the Times.

Thomas Mellon Evans (September 8, 1910 – July 17, 1997) was an American financier who was one of the country's early corporate raiders, as well as a philanthropist and Thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder who won the 1981 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Phillip Gene Ruffin (born March 14, 1935) is an American businessman. He owns the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino and Circus Circus Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, in addition to a number of other enterprises including hotels, casinos, greyhound racing tracks, oil production, convenience stores, real estate, and the world's largest manufacturer of hand trucks. He is also a business partner of former United States President Donald Trump, with whom he co-owns the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. On the Forbes 2019 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked No. 838 with a net worth of US$3.1 billion.

Gayle Cook (née Karch, born March 1, 1934) is an American businesswoman who in 1963 co-founded the Cook Group, a medical equipment manufacturing company, with her husband William Cook. In 2014, her net worth was estimated at US$5.8 billion.

Travis Ward (January 29, 1922 – November 12, 2015) was an independent Texas oil man.

Joseph Dahr Jamail Jr. (October 19, 1925 – December 23, 2015) was an American attorney and billionaire. The wealthiest practicing attorney in America, he was frequently referred to as the "King of Torts".In 2015, his net worth was estimated by Forbes to be $1.7 billion. Jamail died on December 23, 2015 in Houston from complications related to pneumonia.

Robert Cornelius Murphy (born July 19, 1988) is a Filipino-American Internet entrepreneur and software engineer. He is the co-founder and the CTO of the American multinational technology company Snap Inc., which he created (as Snapchat Inc.) with Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown while they were students at Stanford University.
He was named as one of the 100 most influential people in 2014 by Time. In 2015, Murphy was first listed and became the second-youngest billionaire in the world by Forbes.

James Martin Moran (August 8, 1918 – April 24, 2007) was an American car dealer and philanthropist whose net worth of $2.4 billion ranked him 390th on the Forbes 400 at the time of his death.

Harold Clark Simmons (May 13, 1931 – December 29, 2013) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist whose banking expertise helped him develop the acquisition concept known as the leveraged buyout (LBO) to acquire various corporations. He was the owner of Contran Corporation and of Valhi, Inc., (a NYSE traded company about 90% controlled by Contran). As of 2006, he controlled five public companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange: NL Industries; Titanium Metals Corporation, the world's largest producer of titanium; Valhi, Inc., a multinational company with operations in the chemicals, component products, Waste Control Specialists (waste management), titanium metals industries; CompX International, manufacturer of ergonomic products, and Kronos Worldwide, leading producer and marketer of titanium dioxide.