Reclusive man who died in LA fire claimed to be member of the wildly wealthy Rothschild family. But was he?

The man appeared to have changed his name to Rothschild decades ago, after his brother says he vanished

William de Rothschild’s home in Laurel Canyon, pictured, is now badly burned following a devastating fire last week (Google Maps)

Headlines throughout the US last week announced that a member of the wealthy Rothschild banking family died after his home was badly damaged in a fire. But new reports are now emerging indicating that the man may have been lying about his identity.

An 87-year-old man who was known as William de Rothschild was found dead in his burned Laurel Canyon home on November 28, the Los Angeles Times reported. In the days following, however, the newspaper discovered that he was not born with the surname and he does not appear in the Rothschilds’ official family tree.

That’s when the Times discovered he changed his name to Rothschild – after he disappeared decades ago.

Court records reveal that a man in Los Angeles County named William Alfred Kauffman changed his name to William Alexander de Rothschild in 1985, the Times reports.

“I want to take my family name, that I prefer to Kauffman, it would simplify my life greatly, taking the name from my mother’s side,” the man wrote in the court filing.

William De Rothschild, who owned this house in Laurel Canyon, was originally named William Alfred Kauffman, the Los Angeles Times reports (Google Maps)

At that point, he had disappeared and had no contact with those who had known him previously, including his family, his brother told the Times.

“My brother is not a Rothschild, as far as I know,” said Richard Kauffman, 78.

Kauffman said he thought his brother had been dead for decades.

“It’s odd, because I thought he had died years ago, because he disappeared,” Kauffman added. There had been “no contact with my parents, who were getting older. It’s a strange feeling.”

Kauffman added that his brother never reconnected with their parents, who have since died.

“My brother was kind of a mysterious character when I knew him,” he said.

Rothschild’s neighbors described him as a wealthy man with an extensive car collection. However, his house was 825 square feet with just two bedrooms, the Times reports, and worth about $1 million.

Neighbors also told the Times they thought Rothschild had recently given several cars to the city’s Petersen Automotive Museum a week before his death – but the museum told the outlet they have no record of such a donation.

“He carried himself like I think a Rothschild would,” one neighbor told the Times. “The money is there, whether it is Rothschild money or not.”

The uber-wealthy Rothschilds got their start as noble bankers in sixteenth-century Frankfurt, Germany. The Jewish Rothschilds, have also been the subject of several baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Right-wing Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene outlandishly complained in 2021 that a space laser controlled by an executive at a bank owned by the Rothschild family sparked a California wildfire.