Phil Ruffin
$4.6B
Born
Mar 17, 1935
Age
90
Source of Wealth
Casinos, real estate
Residence
Las Vegas, Nevada
Citizenship
United States
Marital Status
Married
Children
5
Education
Drop Out, Wichita State University
- Phil Ruffin owns the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino plus 50% of the Trump International Las Vegas hotel alongside friend Donald Trump.
- Son of a grocer, Ruffin dropped out of college to sell hamburgers with his buddies, then used the profits to buy convenience stores.
- From there he expanded into real estate: strip malls, office parks and hotels, including Marriotts in Alabama, California and the Bahamas.
- In 1998 he bought the New Frontier Hotel & Casino for $165 million; he sold it for $1.2 billion in 2007 to Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva.
- He bought Treasure Island from MGM in 2009, amid the great recession, for $775 million.
- In 2019, Ruffin bought Circus Circus and the Las Vegas Festival Grounds from MGM for $825 million.
- Donald Trump was the best man at Ruffin's 2008 wedding to his wife Oleksandra, a former Miss Ukraine.
- Ruffin once beat out five other billionaires, including investor Ron Burkle, at a Forbes-hosted charity poker game.
- His first job was working at a W.T. Grant department store, where he once was tasked with repossessing a monkey a customer didn't pay for.
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