Joe Exotic Net Worth: 'Tiger King' Star Got An Impressive Inheritance From Rich Grandfather

Joe Exotic is popular at the moment due to a breakout series on a streaming platform, but how rich is he really?

Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, is the central subject of a hit Netflix series this 2020. On the show, he was a colorful character who had different husbands, a singer and someone who once ran for senator.

Maldonado-Passage reportedly inherited $250,000 from his grandfather, which means he was not that poor as everyone initially thought. According to Cosmopolitan, Joe Exotic also had other sources of income aside from being a zoo owner. He toured malls with his mobile petting zoo. While it may seem a petty idea, this fetched some serious money for him. He once earned as much as $23,697 in just five days of mobile petting zoo. This could mean, more or less a hundred thousand earnings in a month for the eccentric star.

Like any other zoos, his zoo had an entrance fee of $15 for adults. Again, this may seem small but he had close to zero overhead. He also liked to crowdsource for his expenses. At one point, his followers all shelled out $17,000 for proper care of three bears he just rescued. As to how much of it actually went to the bears’ welfare is not known.

As per Capital FM, in his heyday, Exotic’s fortune was easily worth around $10-15 million. With his cunning ways to earn money on the side, it was not an outrageous estimate. On the other hand, the show’s other star and Exotic’s rival, Carole Baskin, had a net worth of $10-20 million. In the series, she was portrayed as a millionaire who fought for animal welfare, especially those of big cats. She owns Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida but a lot of people question her real intent behind it.

Joe Exotic currently serves time in prison for 22 years for trafficking animals and killing big cats. He accused Baskin of being responsible for the disappearance of her husband in 1997, even suspecting that she fed him to her cats. Baskin laughed off the accusations, Telegraph reported.

The story of “Tiger King” became a hit because of its absurdness and twists that came out of nowhere. It captured the attention of those in their homes during the lockdown period and offered a bit of respite from what is happening during the pandemic. Things may not have ended well for the show’s star but from the looks of things, he made money and was quite happy back in the day.