Billionaire dubbed ‘real-life Montgomery Burns’ ordered to jail

An 84-year-old Detroit billionaire who owns the nation's busiest border crossing was ordered to jail Thursday for contempt of court. Here's why Manuel "Matty" Moroun gets compared to Montgomery Burns.

To understand Moroun and his importance requires some Detroit geography. The Ambassador Bridge spanning the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, was built by a private company in 1929. After decades of boom and bust, it was bought by Moroun in 1979, whose family-owned trucking business relied on it. With dozens of models from the Chevy Camaro to the Toyota RAV4 built in Canada, the Ambassador Bridge has grown into the nation's busiest bridge; some $100 billion in goods crosses it every year, one-fourth of the trade between Canada and the United States.

Since buying the Ambassador, Moroun has aggressively fought every attempt by governments and businesses on either side of the Detroit River to add a public bridge, from political pressure to lawsuits. The Ambassador is the only privately owned international bridge in the United States; the next nearest crossing suitable for semi-truck traffic is 67 miles north. Between hefty bridge tolls, its duty-free gas stations and his trucking empire, Moroun has earned a fortune of $1.8 billion, according to Forbes.