Roger Williamson claims to be the illegitimate son of the late Las Vegas casino king Sheldon Adelson and an accountant
An email from a secret son of a deceased billionaire reached the Forbes US newsroom and it looked promising. The sender was a man who claimed that his famous father built the largest casino company in the world, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, explaining how he had a lot of information to share. “I should know,” he wrote, “I am the biological son of Sheldon Adelson .”
The first time the man who introduced himself as Sheldon Adelson Jr. called, it was from a phone with the Las Vegas area code. Within minutes, he told an incredible story about how his ultra-wealthy father, who passed away in 2021, left a fortune of $35 billion to his wife, Miriam, and their children, as well as a global casino empire with net revenue of $35 billion. $ 10.3 billion in 2023, met his mother.
“My father was a friend of Sumner Redstone, and in 1959, to be exact, he went to Sumner’s office and saw this beautiful Italian woman,” he began. Redstone, who eventually became the billionaire chairman of Viacom and CBS, apparently told Adelson that the woman, his accountant Anna Paradiso, was a “life saver” but to “leave her alone” as she was divorced and had five children.
“They had a five-year romance, and I am the product of that,” he continued in a nasally Boston accent. “When they were waiting for me… they had a conversation and agreed that I would not be any responsibility to Mr. Adelson; there are court documents to prove it.” He also stated that there is a birth certificate registered in Revere, Massachusetts , which would confirm that Adelson is his father.
Then the supposed son made a mistake – he claimed to be Sheldon Adelson’s only biological son. Although Adelson adopted his first wife’s children, in addition to his second wife’s children, he and Miriam had two children of their own, Adam and Matan.
Still, he insisted that his father’s friends would confirm his story — from Steve Forbes, the president of this publication, to Steve Wynn, the billionaire co-founder of Wynn Resorts. Both said they had never heard of him. But that shouldn’t be too surprising, since the real problem is that Sheldon Adelson Jr. doesn’t exist.
The reality
The man claiming to be the late billionaire’s namesake son is actually a convicted serial scammer named Roger Williamson , who grew up in Revere, Massachusetts. (That last detail was true, although the birth certificate he claims exists does not, according to the city’s department of vital records and statistics.)
Williamson is a man with a long history of inventing identities and deceiving people – he has used at least 11 different names – and is described by several family members, ex-girlfriends, former landlords and other victims of his schemes as a compulsive liar. .
The Adelson family, through a spokesperson, confirmed that they have known Williamson for years but will not “dignify the nonsense of these allegations by providing specific responses to each of them.”
In an email sent to Forbes, Leonard Adelson, Sheldon’s brother, added, «I am completely surprised that this man would make that claim,» noting that the entire situation is «scandalous and ridiculous.»
When Williamson realized that his scheme to appear in the pages of Forbes magazine as the previously unknown heir to a billionaire was not working, he stopped returning calls. In an email written from an address associated with a fictitious company called The Adelson Company, he tried to backtrack and said that the two previous interviews he had given “must be with someone else,” he wrote. «I do not know him.»
In his last email before withdrawing, in response to the question of who is he if not the “bastard son” – his words – of Sheldon Adelson? “I am nobody,” he wrote.
Roger Williamson’s true identity
This individual was born on January 24, 1962, at 10:35 pm, in Boston. His mother, Anna Paradiso – he didn’t lie about her name, and she worked for Redstone, but at a concession stand at one of his drive-ins – was married to his father, Robert Williamson, a sailor with a gambling problem, according to family members.
Robert Williamson died when Roger was 8 years old. “When Robert wasn’t at sea, he was at home throwing whatever money he had,” says a family member who asked not to be identified for fear of what Roger
might do in retaliation. Before hanging up, the family member explained that Williamson is not welcome after years of scams and schemes.
In fact, before Williamson’s mother, who suffered from dementia, passed away in 2016, prosecutors alleged that he was stealing her Social Security payments to the point that she was nearly evicted from her home.
The Williamsons lived in a multi-family home on Shirley Avenue in Revere, a few blocks from the beach. Even as a child, Williamson was known for being a “con man,” says Tony Iacoviello, who has known him since first grade. “His nickname was ‘Roger the Derailleur’ because he was always lying,” says Iacoviello.
Williamson’s life of crime began when he was 18 – he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to three years probation. Over the next few years, he would be accused of a long series of check thefts. Many of the charges were dropped after he paid restitution to the victims.
In a 2004 bankruptcy filing, Williamson, who was 42 at the time, revealed he had no assets except for an old car, some furniture and clothes, worth a total of $3,500. He also owed a total of $40,000 to creditors, including a girlfriend from whom he had extorted $16,500.
In 2008, Williamson specialized in more creative shots. That year, he was convicted of practicing law without a license after convincing a Florida woman that he was a lawyer and could represent her for a fee of $7,000.
In 2009, police alleged that he began posing as a Hollywood producer named Mark Willis and managed to lure several women to a Boston hotel to read sexually charged scripts and convinced at least one of them to participate in a seductive scene with him in exchange for a chance to get a high-paying job on a non-existent movie with Ben Stiller .
In 2011, while running a pizzeria in Peabody , Massachusetts, using the alias George Meehan, local prosecutors claim he also attempted to extort Adam Sandler, who was filming a movie in the area, by falsely claiming that the actor and his crew had asked for $2. .5 thousand in food and they didn’t pay.
But soon Williamson’s shots began to go wrong . In 2013, he pulled a series of scams that eventually landed him in jail for nine months and pleaded guilty to 23 criminal charges in 2015, including money laundering, witness intimidation, securities fraud, criminal harassment, publishing false financial statements , forgery, check theft and identity fraud.
Williamson was convicted of scamming two investors out of $50,000 by convincing them to buy a 25% stake in a non-existent catering and restaurant business called Soprano’s Cafe. Another victim, a man and real estate agent named Fred Mattei, rented restaurant space to Williamson and claimed he stole $4,000 worth of equipment and barely paid the rent.
“Eventually, I got the satisfaction of seeing him in jail,” says Mattei.
The case of Sheldon Adelson
As for the manufactured father, Williamson didn’t choose Sheldon Adelson by chance. In the mid-1980s, his sister Shirley began dating, and eventually married, a Dorchester man named Richard Goodman, who is, in fact, Adelson’s cousin.
According to family members, Shirley and Richie attended Adelson and Miriam’s wedding in Israel in 1991, flying in on a private jet. Shortly thereafter, Williamson began using the tenuous connection with the billionaire casino executive as an excuse to ask for money or finance his crazy business ideas.
In the mid-2000s, the Goodmans attended the opening of one of Adelson’s casinos in Macau, and there Sheldon asked Shirley to tell Williamson to stop bothering him, family members say. But he didn’t stop.
In an email Williamson sent to Adelson in August 2016, he claimed to be in bad financial shape — “I’m crawling on my belly for your help,” Williamson wrote in an email, claiming to owe more than $100,000. , including more than $40,000 in unpaid child support. (According to family court records, this is true.)
“I will work for you anywhere in the world for free and I will also pay you back with interest,” Williamson continued. “Mr. Adelson, I have an idea for a chocolate bar and several other business ideas. I’m not looking for charity or handouts.”
Similarities
Despite not being related, Adelson and Williamson have something in common. Both grew up poor in the Boston area. Adelson was born in Dorchester to immigrant parents, his father from Lithuania and his mother from Wales.
The Adelsons lived in a one-bedroom apartment, where young Sheldon slept on the floor, and his father supported them by driving a taxi. However, entrepreneurship gave Adelson a way out of poverty.
At age 12, he borrowed $200 from his uncle and bought a license to sell newspapers. A few years later, he started a vending machine business. He had success with Comdex, his personal computer conference, and in 1989 he bought the failing Sands casino for $128 million.
In 1995, Adelson sold the conference business to Softbank for $862 million and reinvested the proceeds in his casino, which he demolished in November 1996 to build the Venetian in Las Vegas, with thousands of suites, conference spaces and a Grand Canal with gondolas. (Las Vegas Sands would eventually sell the Venetian, which includes the Palazzo Tower and Sands Exhibition Center, in 2021 for $6.3 billion, following Adelson’s death.)
But Adelson’s biggest move was investing more than $12 billion in Macau and building casinos on the Cotai Strip and in Singapore, cementing his reputation as the world’s biggest casino mogul. Later in life, Adelson and Miriam became political mega-donors in the world of Republican politics, contributing more than $200 million to various conservative political action committees.
While Adelson made big deals in the real world, Williamson lived his life as a serial fabulist and petty criminal. Even after it became clear that his lies about Sheldon Adelson had been exposed, Williamson told one more outrageous story before hanging up the phone.
When asked what Williamson has been after through all these years of cheating, a family member doesn’t hesitate: «He wants money, notoriety, acceptance,» she says, «what most people want.»
