Oct 30, 2015 08:00 PM EDT
Oprah Winfrey Net Worth: Shocked with 'Secret Son' Ambush; How Much is the ‘OWN’ Network Owner and Founder?

Oprah Winfrey's net worth is, no doubt, one of the biggest in the entertainment industry. Having become an actress, director/producer, entrepreneur, personality and philanthropist after over forty decades, her earnings and accomplishments has made her unparalleled by any personality in Hollywood.

However, in spite of Oprah Winfrey's net worth and influence, there will be people that would dare set her up and abuse her kindness.

Earlier this month, the 61-year-old entertainment mogul went to a taping for "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," after which she was reportedly "ambushed" by her "secret son" at outside the Ed Sullivan Theater.

"As I left, and he was looking so forlorn, he was like, 'Can I speak to you?' So I said to somebody on my team, 'Will somebody get Calvin's number so I can contact him later," Winfrey says. "I didn't realize the whole thing was a setup," said Oprah. "When I realized the whole thing was a setup, I was no longer interested in speaking to him." 

Oprah Winfrey wants to clear any false reports, and in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she reveals that the incident in October 15 was of a man who she tried to help once in her life, according to PEOPLE.

According to Oprah, the man's name is Calvin Mitchell, whose family she tried helping more than 20 years ago. She added that he was a boy she simply met at the set of the TV movie "There Are No Children Here," clearing any rumors of a "long-lost child," according to The New York Daily News.

Oprah Winfrey admitted that she was completely taken by the boy that she wanted to help his family out. She said she enrolled Mitchell in a local private school and even moved the family to a better home. When the boy started missing classes and Oprah found out that the reason was that they had no clocks for alarms, she even "got a bag full of clocks, came back to the house, taught them how to set the alarm and all that."

However, things turned sour when she learned that the boy sold his story to a tabloid. She stopped contact with him in the early nineties. 

Winfrey said she was left disappointed by the boy again after "The Late Show" appearance. However, she is treating it as a learning experience.  

"I learned from that experience, if you really want to change somebody's life, you gotta be able to spend enough time with them to change the way they think about what their life can be," she said. "It isn't enough to give a person a new life or money or a new car, you have to teach them how to fish themselves," she said.

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey's experience with Mitchell inspired her to open the Leadership Academy for Girls, according to ET Online.

Oprah Winfrey is the long-reigning queen of daytime TV. She now has the "Oprah Winfrey Network," a now four-year-old cable network which has soaring hits partly because of collaborations with director Tyler Perry. Apart from Oprah Winfrey's net worth coming from her former talk show and "OWN," she was also able to add to her earnings after her "The Life You Want" tour sold out across Newark to Seattle stadiums in 2014.

So how much is Oprah Winfrey's net worth? According to Forbes, she is worth a whopping $3.2 billion. 

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