OP's conspiracy theory is absolutely true. There is a whole thread of academic research estimating the right tail of the wealth distribution (spoiler: the Fed household finances microdata is garbage).

Diff the Bloomberg and Forbes rich lists... they're not the same list. One oligarch on those lists had their estimated net worth double after the Appleby leaks turned up some trusts. I'm pretty sure Bloomberg just calls people up and asks them how much they have.

I guess it depends on where peoples wealth comes from. It’s probably far easier to estimate Zuckerberg and Bezos when you know it’s tied to a publicly traded company than if it’s all private. I have a good friend who is a billionaire that laughs at these lists knowing they know nothing about his money (not a public company), where it comes from, and where it lives.

Yup, Mexico has a ton of wealthy people because of drugs, you don't see their names on these lists.

The Forbes rich list has some criteria such as from their own revenue or share prices. Basically private market generated wealth. There are exceptions and the line gets blurred really quickly, but thats their stated goal.

Pretty simple with public companies. With private companies and current market it really does get messy. I'm thinking about Valve and how much higher it would be priced on public market compared to private... And that can't be only case. So the private market is quite dark place...

Yes, and most people aren't actually trying to be on the rich list. When I was in Monaco people were saying leave the bragging to the Americans. There is no transparency in the markets, thats also a distinctly American half-goal.

The don’t list family trusts either. So multi-billionaire families like the Rockafellers and the Rothchilds aren’t there.

Now that is a good conspiracy theory :-)