Before Forbes stripped away her prestigious billionaire status, Kylie Jenner went on a major spending spree.
The 22-year-old splurged on a $36.5 million mansion in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles in April — and shelled out another $15 million on an empty lot in Hidden Hills the following month. A source told Us Weekly at the time that the makeup mogul was “continuing to splash the cash” by purchasing a private jet around the same time as closing her real estate deals. The Kylie Cosmetics founder also reportedly gifted her siblings expensive crystal clutches for Mother’s Day and dropped $1 million to support coronavirus relief at the beginning of the global health crisis.
Less than one month after spending millions on lavish presents and impressive real estate, the reality star’s fortune was called into question by Forbes, who named her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in both 2019 and 2020. On Friday, May 29, the publication alleged that Jenner’s brand “is significantly smaller, and less profitable, than the family has spent years leading the cosmetics industry and media outlets, including Forbes, to believe.” Along with claims that she lied about her business’ profits and forged tax returns, Forbes claimed that the Life of Kylie star’s team campaigned heavily for her to be featured on the cover.
Hours after the exposé made headlines, Jenner fired back at the assumptions about her worth. “What am i even waking up to. i thought this was a reputable site..” she tweeted on Friday. “All i see are a number of inaccurate statements and unproven assumptions lol. i’ve never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. period.”
The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star asserted that she was “blessed” and “doing perfectly fine” despite the speculation about her fortune. Her attorney, Michael Kump, later told Us that the Forbes article was “filled with outright lies” and demanded that the publication “immediately and publicly retract” its claims.
Though Jenner defended herself against the business magazine’s allegations, others have been questioning her wealth for years. When the businesswoman was first honored by Forbes in 2019, Nick Cannon said it all came down to Jenner’s “great publicist.”
“I feel there’s a little spinning there,” he told Vlad TV in January 2019. “Somebody’s publicist made a call. … If we say that she’s the equivalent of Jay-Z and it’s the No. 1 spot, it’s going to make news everywhere. It’s going to be hard for me to believe that Kylie Jenner is making as much money as Jay-Z.”
