Saturday, July 4, 2026

No Heroes Here: The Kardashians Lied to Forbes About Kylie Jenner’s Billionaire Status, and Forbes Loved It

Share

★ Make Showbiz411 your Preferred Source on Google

‘m not surprised that they are now at the center of their own controversy about Kylie Jenner, the Kardashians, and Kylie’s billionaire status.

The fact is, Forbes is now unmasking their own bad reporting. They’ve published an article that contradicts their original piece, from 2019, declaring Kylie Jenner “the youngest billionaire” in the world.

What the new article fails to admit is that Forbes started all this in the first place. Their reporter, Natalie Robehmed, is gone from the magazine and relegated in the new piece by Chase Peterson-Withorn (Malcolm Forbes would have loved that byline) and Madeline Berg an “additional reporting” credit. (On her Twitter page, Robehmed id’s herself as “freelance journalist mostly working in audio, formerly @Forbes.”)

Robehmed seems like she was the one duped by the Kardashians about Kylie Jenner’s billionaire status. But didn’t it make sense? Kylie, 21, with no education, no wherewithal of any kind, a fashion model more because of notoriety of her awful family than any real talent, a billionaire? Sure, why not. Forbes loves to make proclamations about celebrities’ worth and they willdy miss the mark most of the time. There’s no reporting in the piece. They just took Kylie’s word for it.

Now comes along Peterson-Withorn and Berg. You can only imagine that since the March 6, 2019 piece a lot of people in the cosmetics world have questioned the original story.  Rather than wait for someone else to reveal Kylie’s lies, and face embarrassment for allowing it all to happen, Forbes jumps into the fray with a proactive story: Inside Kylie Jenner’s Web of Lies. The story is NOT subtitled “How Kris Jenner Duped Us and We Allowed It.”

After assigning blame for the miscalculation of Kylie’s success to WWD (Womens Wear Daily) and anyone they can think of, th new writers conclude: “The business was never that big to begin with, and the Jenners have lied about it every year since 2016—including having their accountant draft tax returns with false numbers—to help juice Forbes’ estimates of Kylie’s earnings and net worth. While we can’t prove that those documents were fake (though it’s likely), it’s clear that Kylie’s camp has been lying.”

Really, no kidding. We could have told you that in the first place.

The writers sum it up: “Forbes has recalculated Kylie’s net worth and concluded that she is not a billionaire. A more realistic accounting of her personal fortune puts it at just under $900 million, despite the headlines surrounding the Coty deal that seemed to confirm her billionaire status. More than a third of that is the estimated $340 million in post-tax cash she would have pocketed from selling a majority of her company. The rest is made up of revised earnings based on her business’ smaller size and a more conservative estimate of its profitability, plus the value of her remaining share of Kylie Cosmetics—which is not only smaller than the Jenners led us to believe but is also worth less now than it was when the deal was announced in November, given the economic effects of the coronavirus.”

One thing is clear: chasing the Karsdashians to boost PR and circulation backfired for Forbes spectacularly.

As for the avaracious, attention seeking family of glamorous grifters: this news, plus their falling ratings on their idiotic TV show, point to maybe at long last an end to their run as supermarket tabloid stars trying to pass as substantial entities.

 

 

 

Donate to Showbiz411.com

Showbiz411 is now in its 13th year of providing breaking and exclusive entertainment news. This is an independent site, unlike the many Hollywood trades that are owned by one company. To continue providing news that takes a fresh look at what's going on in movies, music, theater, etc, advertising is our basis. Reader donations would be greatly appreciated, too. They are just another facet of keeping fact based journalism alive.
Thank you


Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Read more

In Other News