Don Hankey, a Los Angeles-based subprime auto loan billionaire, has said two of his biggest early-career mistakes were to only do business with honest people and to trust his gut to pick those people out.
“I would sit down and look somebody in the eye and think I could determine if they were honest or not,” Hankey last year told the Los Angeles Business Journal, which ranked him as the sixth-wealthiest person in Los Angeles. “I got burnt several times.”
Hankey may be playing with fire again. Earlier this week, Knight Insurance Group, one of more than a handful of companies that make up Hankey’s financial empire, put up a $175mn bond for Donald Trump, an amount the former president had to post to the court in order to avoid property seizures while he appeals against a near half-billion-dollar judgment against him and his companies.