VietNamNet Bridge – Millionaire Nguyen Be Lory, an illegitimate child of late US billionaire Larry Hillblom and his mother, Nguyen Thi Be, have returned to their hometown in Binh Thuan province to visit their family after 13 years in the US.


Nguyen Be Lory and his mother in 1998.


 

Nguyen Be Lory, 18, owns assets worth around $100 million from his unofficial father – billionaire Larry Hillblom. However, Lory is a student so he will manage the assets when he is 21.

 

Lory has returned to Vietnam with his mother, his uterine brothers and his manager to visit his maternal grandfather.

 

The family went to Con Dao Island, where Brangelina and their six kids stayed in late 2011. Lory said that he had not known about Con Dao until the Brangelina family were there. He wanted to discover the island. The millionaire boy said that he would return to Con Dao.

 

The family went back to HCM City and then to Phan Thiet, where billionaire Harry Hillblom invested tens of million USD to build the Novotel Hotel and Ocean Dunes  golf course 20 years ago. After that they flew back to the US. The visit to Vietnam was kept secret.

 

Larry Lee Hillblom (1943–1995) was an American businessman, and a co-founder of DHL Worldwide Express. The company was later transformed into a general air courier, and Hillblom's wealth expanded to several billion dollars. In the 1980s, he moved to Saipan, where he started several businesses and development projects in Hawaii, Vietnam and the Philippines.

 

In Vietnam, he spent $40 million to restore the Dalat Palace Hotel as well as the Dalat Palace Golf Course, in an attempt to recreate colonial times. Other investments included the Novotel Dalat, Novotel Phan Thiet and Ocean Dunes Golf Course and, outside Ho Chi Minh City, Riverside Apartments.

 

He was an aircraft enthusiast, and flew several vintage aircraft. Hillblom's seaplane crashed on May 21, 1995, on a flight from Pagan Island to Saipan. The bodies of the pilot and of a fellow passenger / business partner were found, but Hillblom's body was never recovered.

 

Hillblom's will stated that the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) would receive his estate, and did not specify any children in the 1982 will. There was no "disinheritance clause" in the will, which Hillblom thought was unnecessary since he did not recognize his illegitimate children.

 

After his death, his estate was the subject of lawsuits from children fathered across the Pacific. According to Saipan law, illegitimate children born after a will has been drawn up are entitled to make a claim on the estate.

 

Girls from several Asian and Pacific countries made claims that he had committed statutory rape on them and was the father of their illegitimate children. Most of the attorneys in Saipan became involved in the case, according to one Saipan attorney. However, since Hillblom's body wasn't recovered in the crash, there was no DNA that could be used to determine paternity. Mysteriously, his house in Saipan was discovered to have been wiped clean. The sinks had been scrubbed with muriatic acid, and toothbrushes, combs, hairbrushes and clothes were found buried in the backyard, making them useless for DNA testing.

 

Investigators discovered he had a facial mole removed at UCSF Medical Center, and it was still there; UCSF agreed to relinquish the mole. It later turned out that the mole was not from Hillblom.

 

Hillblom's mother, brother, and half-brother initially refused to submit their DNA (which could have also been used to determine paternity of the various children). Investigators then decided to use a different tactic: how did the DNA of the children compare with each other? Since the girls were located in different countries, if the children shared certain DNA markers, they'd almost certainly have the same father. In the end, a judge ordered Hillblom's brother and mother to submit to genetic testing. The tests confirmed that four of the eight claimants were Hillblom's children.

 

It was ultimately determined that a Vietnamese child, Lory Nguyen, the Nonan kids-Honeylyn Nonan, Alexandra Nonan, and Jeril Nonan, and a child from Palau, Larry Hillblom Jr. were fathered by Hillblom. In the final settlement, each of the four children received $90 million (about $50 million after taxes and fees), while the remaining $240 million went to the Hillblom Foundation, which followed Hillblom's wishes and donated funds to University of California for medical research.

 

A film by Alexis Spraic documenting the legal hoopla that took place after Hillblom's death, titled Shadow Billionaire premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

 

 

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