The Richest Dog in the World

Full transcript

Madonna once sold her Miami mansion to a dog.

The dog was a German shepherd named Gunther, and the year was two thousand. On paper, the buyer was a company set up in his name. It paid seven and a half million dollars.

The story that came with Gunther went like this. A rich German countess named Karlotta Liebenstein died in nineteen ninety-two. She left her fortune to her dog, Gunther the Third. It was put in a trust, which is money that someone manages for someone else. When he died, the money passed to his puppies, and then to theirs. By twenty twenty-one, news reports put the Gunther fortune at hundreds of millions of dollars.

For years, people believed it. In nineteen ninety-eight, Guinness World Records put Gunther in its book as the richest dog in the world. A year later, it took the title back, because it could not find enough evidence.

Then, in twenty twenty-one, the mansion went up for sale for about thirty-two million dollars. The Associated Press, one of the largest news agencies in the world, reported that the dog was selling it. Soon after, the agency said it had found no evidence that the countess ever existed. It apologized for the story.

The money was real, but it did not come from a countess. It came from an Italian family that owned a drug company. Its scientists helped develop a bone medicine that is sold around the world as Fosamax.

A son of that family, Maurizio Mian, put part of the money in the dog's name. In a Netflix series in twenty twenty-three, he admitted the countess was made up. He said putting the money in the dog's name had been about taxes.

Here is our take. A story can be repeated for thirty years, even by famous names, and still not be true. Before you believe a story like this, ask one plain question. Is there any record that the person at the center of it really lived?

The dog was real. The money was real. The mansion was real. Only the countess was made up.