How did Peter Thiel use a Roth IRA — a tax-free acct meant to help middle class Americans save for retirement — to amass $5 BILLION dollars*?
(*that he'll probably never have to pay taxes on)
A thread 👇
2/ While typical Roth holders stash some post-tax wages into an IRA & hope it grows over time, tax records reveal the @PayPal cofounder has used stock deals unavailable to most people to completely change the game for himself
3/ In early 1999, Thiel was the CEO of a tech startup. He decided to use a Roth to buy dirt-cheap shares of that company; a relatively small gamble.
But, it could result in a huge payout.
4/ Tom Anderson, founder of Pensco, the company that set up the IRA account for Thiel:
“I said, ‘If you really think this is going to be big, you know, you might want to consider this new Roth.’”
5/ The Roth IRA was created in 1997 to allow “hard-working, middle-class Americans” to save, tax-free for retirement.
6/ Unlike a traditional IRA, where taxes are paid when you withdraw funds in retirement, with Roths any cash taken out after you turn 59.5 years old is tax-free.
7/ To prevent the rich from using the Roth as a tax shelter, annual contributions were capped (initially at $2,000) and individuals making more than $110K/year were blocked from using them.
8/ When Thiel started his IRA, his income was $73K, putting him under the income limit. But he had one huge advantage most investors didn’t...
9/ He was using the Roth to buy shares of his own privately held company. What’s that mean? There was no public stock exchange putting a value on those shares.
10/ So.
👉 IRS records show that in 1999 Thiel purchased 1.7 million shares of his startup, which would soon become PayPal, for just $1,700 — a tenth of a penny per share.
11/ Even though Thiel's startup received millions in funding within months, Pensco still told the IRS these founders' shares were worth less than $1,700 at the end of 1999.
See where this is going?
12/ After that initial investment, Thiel never contributed any additional money to this Roth.
He didn't need to. It took on a life of its own.
👉 Within a year, that $1700 investment had grown to $3.8 million.
13/ 👉 PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. The proceeds from the shares Thiel sold stayed — tax-free — in the IRA, which grew to $28.5 million.
His financial assistant later described the maneuver:
14/ Had he held those shares in a normal investment account, Thiel would have owed the IRS 20% and another 9% to California.
But, because they were in a Roth, those millions remained untaxed.
15/ Thiel then used the wealth amassed in his Roth to invest in other startups, buying shares of private companies at bargain-basement prices before they went public. Companies like @Facebook and @PalantirTech
@Facebook@PalantirTech 16/ In 2004, he provided Facebook's first large outside cash infusion, investing $500K. His Facebook shares would grow tax-free in his Roth.
17/ With the growth of these and other investments, Thiel's Roth swelled to enormous proportions.
👉By the end of 2008, records show it had ballooned to $870 million.
18/ While it took a significant hit during the Great Recession, Thiel’s Roth more than rebounded in the subsequent years.
👉Records show that by 2019, it had grown to $5 billion.
19/ ✋ Whether it continues to grow or not, whatever’s in that Roth in April 2027 — 6 months before Thiel's 60th birthday — can be withdrawn entirely tax free.
20/ Anderson, the founder of the company that set up Thiel’s Roth IRA, remembers saying in 1999 that if the PayPal investment ballooned, “‘you’re not going to pay tax on it when you take it out.”’
“It’s a no-brainer,” he recalls saying.
21/ A spokesman for Thiel accepted detailed questions on Thiel’s behalf, then never responded to @propublica’s phone calls or emails
22/ Thiel's IRA was by far the largest we found, but there are other ultrawealthy Americans with hundreds of millions sheltered from taxes in Roth accounts:
23/ Ted Weschler of Berkshire Hathaway had $264.4M in his Roth at the end of 2018. Randall Smith, whose Alden Global Capital has gutted newspapers around the country, had $252.6M
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THREAD: The Trump administration said their research did not "enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness."
Thousands of scientists disagreed.
We heard from 150+ researchers impacted by the NIH grant terminations on what is being lost in the cuts. 👇
2/ Their experiences reveal consequences that experts say run counter to scientific logic and common sense.
They spoke of the enormous waste generated by an effort intended to save money: Years of research that may never be published. Blood samples that may never be analyzed.
3/ Grant Terminated: An examination of the consequences of abortion restrictions.
Diana Greene Foster set out to study the outcomes of pregnant patients who showed up in emergency depts, examining if state restrictions were causing delays in care.
In April, President Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele shook hands in the Oval Office to celebrate a deal to ship gang members to the notorious CECOT prison.
But a new ProPublica investigation found there’s more to the story. 🧵👇
2/ Bukele has a reputation as a crime fighter. He’s jailed some 80,000 gang members. Crime rates have plunged.
It turns out, though, that he’s protected another set of gangsters: the leaders of the violent MS-13 street gang, U.S. and Salvadoran officials told us.
3/ In 2019, when Bukele was elected, crime was a big problem. So U.S. prosecutors say Bukele’s aides made a deal with the devil. They allegedly worked with El Diablito, alias for the head of MS-13, to trade money and power for votes and less violence. documentcloud.org/documents/2595…
This is Mertarvik, Alaska, population 300. It’s a new town.
Its residents, the vast majority of whom are Yup’ik, began moving in around 2019.
The move was by necessity: The nearby village where many residents previously lived, Newtok, is sinking, its riverbanks eroding. THREAD:
2/ These residents are climate refugees, a term you may have heard before.
While many stories tend to focus on the conditions that displaced them, @EmilySchwing wanted to know: What is the quality of life for people after they’re forced to move? propublica.org/article/newtok…
3/ To find out, Schwing visited Newtok and Mertarvik more than half a dozen times. It’s no easy feat; neither Bethel, AK (where her newsroom KYUK is based) nor Mertarvik have roads going in or out.
If you search for directions between the two, Google Maps returns a blank stare.
1/ For ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for public service, we reported on five pregnant women who died after not receiving timely medical care in states with strict abortion bans.
These are their stories 🧵
2/ Amber Thurman went to the hospital with telltale signs of sepsis, yet it took 20 hours for doctors to intervene with a D&C procedure after abortion became a felony in Georgia. propublica.org/article/georgi…
3/ Doctors warned Candi Miller that another pregnancy could kill her. Under Georgia’s abortion ban, she died trying to navigate the process alone.
“She was trying to terminate the pregnancy, not terminate herself,” Miller’s sister said. propublica.org/article/candi-…
1/ It’s been almost 27 years since Nike’s co-founder Phil Knight acknowledged the company's products had become synonymous with “slave wages.”
While investigating Nike’s claims about sustainability, we found that workers’ experiences cast doubt on Nike’s commitment to reform. 🧵
2/ Nike says its suppliers pay 1.9X the local minimum wage, excluding overtime, across most of the 1.1M people making its products.
But a payroll sheet for one Cambodian factory reveals few people making that much.
3/ Out of all 3,720 workers at Y&W Garment, just 41 people earned 1.9X the minimum wage of ~$1/hour, even when counting bonuses and incentives. (Many earned a base pay of $204/month, Cambodia’s minimum wage last year.)