Since Tony Villar ended his run as Mayor of Los Angeles in 2013, he's managed to rake in more than $4 million by advising companies such as Herbalife, Banc of California and the natural resources company Cadiz, teaching at USC, and getting paid for giving speeches, according to his tax returns which he released yesterday.
Villar also gets an annual pension of about $100,000 for his years of serving as Mayor.
He was used to living the high life, so naturally we wondered how he would keep that up when he left office. When he exited, he said he had "no job, no house, and no car" because he "was focused on the city of Los Angeles."
In 2012, Villar's final year as Mayor, he reported $155,775 in adjusted gross income. Then in 2014, his first full year out of office, he reported $1.38 million in adjusted gross income.
Villar's been paid by close to two dozen clients since he was Mayor, his longest working relationships being with Herbalife and Banc of California. It's not clear yet how much those companies paid him.
Herbalife is essentially a pyramid scheme, and in 2016 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission forced the company to pay $200 million to its sellers and change they way it does business.
Despite all that, Villar has said he's proud to work for the company:
"They were an L.A. company, an L.A. company whose product and their whole platform is about health and nutrition, they give people a shot at building, if not a small business, at least a little extra income on a monthly basis. My mother sold Tupperware and Avon, I know why Latinos and blacks do it, they need a few extra bucks. It´s called a multiple level marketing company. That’s what Tupperware is, what Avon is — they’ve been around for 30 years. Pyramid schemes aren’t around for 30 years.”