Battle Erupts Over $500 Million Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's Shocking Estate
LAS VEGAS—A mysterious envelope arrived at the offices of one of Nevada’s most high-profile estate attorneys this spring.
It contained a will for former Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh, a beloved tech entrepreneur who died more than four years ago with a fortune of over $500 million. The attorney, Robert Armstrong, was named in the document as an executor of the estate.
It was the first Armstrong had heard of his role in Hsieh’s final wishes.
In fact, Armstrong wasn’t involved in Hsieh’s estate planning, nor had he ever met Hsieh, according to a court filing this week.
A court hearing on the case in Las Vegas on Thursday left no clues about the provenance of the will and only served to deepen the mystery looming over the probate case .
The new will, signed in 2015, transfers more than $50 million, and several Las Vegas properties, to a series of trusts whose beneficiaries remain unknown. The remainder would go to Hsieh’s family.
Armstrong said in the court filing that after receiving the document, he got a phone call in March from a man who identified himself as Kashif Singh. Singh said Pir Muhammad, the man who had the purported will, was his grandfather who had dementia and recently died. Muhammad is a named executor in the will.
Lawyers involved in the case asked a judge for guidance on how to move forward, given that the entrepreneur’s father, Richard Hsieh, has already been administering the estate for years. It had been assumed Tony Hsieh died without a will.
With the mystery unsolved, a lawyer for Hsieh’s family said they are investigating the will. Meanwhile, lawyers for Armstrong and a co-executor, attorney Mark Ferrario, described the family lawyers’ response to the will as taking on a “scorched earth approach” with a “harassment and aggressive posture.”
In the filing, the co-executors said family lawyers have sought “more than 70 requests for documents” from the executors’ law firms “in an apparent move to invalidate the Will.”
In the hearing Thursday, Dara Goldsmith, an attorney for Hsieh’s family, said it would be “premature” at this stage to assume they will contest the will. Goldsmith said it is important to locate and confirm the identity of the witnesses whose signatures appear on the document.
“There is nothing ‘scorched earth’ about thoroughly examining a document that comes out of nowhere, more than four years after Tony Hsieh’s death,” Goldsmith said in a statement after the hearing. She said Richard Hsieh “has faithfully administered his son Tony’s estate and guarded Tony’s legacy.”
The will also designates several million in gifts to foundations, Hsieh’s alma mater Harvard University and family members. After these assets have been distributed, the rest of his fortune would be left to his family.
One of several specific donations laid out in the document included a $3 million gift to Harvard. In late May, attorneys for Harvard asked the court to receive updates and copies of filings related to the case. A lawyer representing the university also appeared at the Thursday hearing, sitting alongside Armstrong and Ferrario.
Hsieh died in November 2020 at the age of 46 from injuries in a house fire in New London, Conn., where he was staying with friends. A medical examiner ruled the death an accident.
Hsieh made his riches from the sale of online shoe retailer Zappos to Amazon.com for $1.2 billion in 2009, and he invested in property across downtown Las Vegas and Park City, Utah. Hsieh thrived on sharing big ideas, spreading his gospel about promoting happiness for workers in corporate America through a bestselling book and speeches. Aspiring entrepreneurs flocked to Las Vegas to learn from him. He struggled with severe drug and alcohol abuse in the months leading up to the fatal fire.
Write to Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com and Angel Au-Yeung at angel.au-yeung@wsj.com
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