Leona Mindy Roberts Helmsley was an American businesswoman and convicted felon. Her flamboyant personality and reputation for tyrannical behavior earned her the nickname Queen of Mean. She was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989. Although initially received a sentence of sixteen years, she was required to serve only nineteen months in prison and two months under house arrest.
About Leona Helmsley in brief
Leona Mindy Roberts Helmsley was an American businesswoman and convicted felon. Her flamboyant personality and reputation for tyrannical behavior earned her the nickname Queen of Mean. She was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989. Although having initially received a sentence of sixteen years, she was required to serve only nineteen months in prison and two months under house arrest. During the trial, a former housekeeper testified that she had heard Helmsly say: \”We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes,\” an aphorism which was identified with her for the rest of her life. Leona was twice married to and divorced from her second husband, garment industry executive Joseph Lubin. After dropping out of Abraham Lincoln High School to seek her fortune, she joined a New York real estate firm, where she eventually became vice-president. Roberts was a chain smoker, consuming several packs a day. She would later claim that she appeared in billboard ads for Chesterfield cigarettes, but her claim remains unsubstantiated. In 1968, while Roberts was working as a condominium broker, she met and began her involvement with the then-married real estate entrepreneur HarryHelmsley. In 1983, the Helmsleys bought a 21-room mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, which they used as a weekend retreat. The remodeling bills came to USD 8million, which came to a total of USD 1million.
A group of contractors sued theHelmsleys for non-payment of the most expensive parts of the property, and eventually paid them off. The couple also developed properties that included 230 Park Avenue, the Empire State Building, and the Tudor City apartment complex on the East Side, as well as hotels in Florida and other states. By the beginning of 1989, twenty-three hotels in the chain were directly controlled by Leona Helm’s. The slightest mistake was usually grounds for firing, and she was known to shout insults and obscenities at targeted employees just before they were fired. Her son Jay Panzirer died of a heart attack resulting from arrhythmia in 1982. On March 31, 1982, Helmsary’s only child, Jay PanZirer, died of heart failure at age 42. The marriage may well have saved her career, as several of her tenants had sued her the year before for forcing them to buy condominiums. They won, and her real estate license was also suspended, so she focused on running Harry’s growing hotel empire. She successfully sued her son’s estate for money and that she claimed borrowed, and was ultimately awarded USD 146,0922 : 212. : 212, the couple’s net worth totalled over USD 1.2billion, they were known for disputing payments to contractors and vendors. They also bought a mansion in Dunnellen, Connecticut in 1983, which cost USD 11million but the Helmleys wanted to make it even more luxurious.
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This page is based on the article Leona Helmsley published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
