Prince Michael Jackson II Could Be The Richest Latino In U.S.

By Tony Castro, Voxxi

The wealthiest Hispanic child in America – and possibly the richest Latino in the country – doesn’t even know who he is nor his heritage.

Prince Michael Jackson II, whom the pop culture world knows as Blanket and who is apparently Hispanic, is the heir to a third of his father’s fortune – currently estimated to be around $500 million but which insiders believe to be much higher.

“No one really knows the extent of the fortune Michael Jackson left behind,” says a family source who is not authorized to speak publicly.

“But with profits from wise investments made since Michael’s death, continued record sales and royalties and his estate’s extensive holdings, it’s likely the value of Michael’s fortune is now in the billions and will continue to grow,” the source told VOXXI.

That means that 10-year-old Blanket, one of Michael’s three children caught in the middle of the most recent Jackson family squabble over the fate of their grandmother, is one of America’s rare billionaire children.

In a 2009 interview with Barbara Walter’s on ABC’s 20/20, LaToya Jackson disclosed that her brother had told her that Blanket is Hispanic.

“I said to Michael, I said, ‘He looks Hispanic.’ And Michael said, ‘He is,’” La Toya told Walters.

According to at least one of the English tabloids, the Daily Mirror, Blanket was born February 21, 2002, in San Diego to a Hispanic woman named Helena to whom Michael paid $20,000 to have her egg fertilized with his sperm and implanted in her.

But the family source says Blanket has apparently never been told that he is Hispanic and knows nothing about his birth mother.

“Blanket and his siblings have been extremely sheltered and for Blanket that includes any knowledge about his birth mother,” the source told VOXXI.

“Other than what LaToya told Barbara Walters, the family has never said much about Blanket’s Hispanic background. It’s just not been something that’s been brought up.

“’He’s a Jackson, and he’s gonna be raised as a Jackson,’ is all Michael’s mother Katherine has ever really said about Blanket.”

Michael’s mother has been the court-appointed guardian of Michael’s children since 2009, but that was changed last week when a judge appointed Tito Jackson’s son, T.J. – the children’s cousin – as  their temporary guardian while matters are sorted out.

“Right now the issue for the children is whether they will go back to their grandmother which is the only home they have known since Michael died,” said the family source. “I think that each of the children eventually will have to deal with their own issues of who they are.

“With Blanket, he’s kind of the odd-man out in that Prince and Paris are supposed to be the children of Michael’s ex, who gave up custody to Michael and, effectively, to Katherine.

“Little Blanket, though, is a man on his own. In that sense, he may wind up more like Michael than any of the children.”

This article was first publisehd in Voxxi.

Los Angeles-based writer Tony Castro is the author of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” (E. P. Dutton, 1974) and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son” (Brassey’s, 2002). His rite of passage memoir, “The Prince of South Waco: Images and Illusions of a Youth,” will be published in 2013.