Meet Ohio's 6 Richest People

CLEVELAND, OH - Ohio has six billionaire's on Forbes' list of the World's Billionaires. The list of Ohioans is topped by Les Wexner, the chairman and CEO of L Brands, which includes clothing store Victoria's Secret.

Wexner is worth an estimated $6.1 billion as of March 21, 2017, Forbes says. His career started in 1963 when he founded The Limited, another clothing store, with a $5,000 loan from his aunt. In 1982, he purchased Victoria's Secret for $1 million. Wexner still lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Clayton Mathile is the second richest person from Ohio. He was born on a farm in the Buckeye State and has lived a classic American story. He was a basketball star for his high school, married a cheerleader, started his career and General Motors and Campbell Soup Company. He then started Iams, the pet food company, and sold it to Procter and Gamble for $2.3 billion in 1999. He now runs ooVoo, a video service online that competes with Google Hangouts and Skype. Forbes estimates that he is worth $3.8 billion.

Hailing from Youngstown, Ohio is the Buckeye State's third richest individual, Denise York. Famous for owning the legendary San Francisco 49ers, who have captured five Super Bowls to the Browns' none. The football team is valued at a little more than $3 billion and York is estimated to be worth $2.4 billion.

Rounding out the list of wealthy Ohioans is the Lerner family. Nancy, Norma, and Randolph Lerner all made the list and are worth $1 billion according to Forbes. The Lerners famously brought the Browns back to Cleveland in 1999 before selling the team to Jimmy Haslam. The Lerners made their money through Al Lerner who started his career in Cleveland real-estate. Eventually the family invested in banking and combined their credit card company MBNA with Bank of America in 2005, creating a $35 billion credit card leviathan.

The Rest of the List

Microsoft founder Bill Gates again topped the list for the fourth year in a row with a fortune of $86 billion, up from $75 billion last year, the magazine said.

The top five richest people, in order, are Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, international retailer Amancio Ortega, and Facebook-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Four of the top five richest people are Americans.

“It was a record year for the richest people on Earth, as the number of billionaires jumped 13 percent to 2,043 from 1,810 last year, the first time ever that Forbes has pinned down more than 2,000 ten-figure-fortunes,” Forbes said. “Their total net worth rose by 18% to $7.67 trillion, also a record. The change in the number of billionaires — up 233 since the 2016 list — was the biggest in the 31 years that Forbes has been tracking billionaires globally.”

The complete Forbes billionaires list can be found here.

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Beth Dalbey, Patch contributed to this report.

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