NOVEMBER 2016 FORBES ASIA | 37JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES
Seminole Gaming
chief executive James
Allen outside the
Seminole Hard Rock
Hotel & Casino in
Hollywood, Florida.
He’s as serious
as a heart attack
about building the
Seminoles’ fortune.to tribal trusts that prevent children or their parents from
touching the funds until adulthood. Applying industry mul-
tiples to the Seminoles’ hospitality and gambling businesses
would put the tribe’s net worth at about $12 billion, includ-
ing some 81,000 pieces of pop music memorabilia—stuf like
Michael Jackson’s red leather jacket from the “Beat It” video
and John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to “Imagine”—valued
at more than $100 million.
Tribe member Tina Osceola, 49, credits gambling riches
with paying for her undergraduate and graduate school ed-
ucation. “Allen never stops,” she says, “and, frankly, I don’t
want someone who stops.”CHIEF EXECUTIVE Jim Allen is the man who made mil-
lionaires out of the entire Seminole Tribe of Florida, butthe tribe’s longtime, controversial, alligator-wrestling chief,
James Billie, deserves even more credit for sparking the en-
tire $33 billion Indian gambling industry to begin with.
It’s just after lunchtime, and Billie ambles into the air-con-
ditioned lobby of the gleaming, four-story Seminole Tribe
headquarters built on an old pig farm in Hollywood, greet-
ing people with a fist bump. In just a few weeks Billie, 72, will
be ousted as chief of the tribe for the second time in four de-
cades. But for now it’s a warm day in August, and he’s just ar-
rived from his home on the nearby Brighton Reservation in
one of the tribe’s red, yellow and white helicopters. Clad in a
short-sleeve polo, Under Armour sweatpants and his favor-
ite penny loafers, he stops to visit with the members of the
tribe in his oice before settling in at the head of the table in a
dimly lit, windowless conference room.