INDIANA

POPULATION: 6.6 MILLION

2016 Gross state Product: $342 BILLION (1.5% Growth) GsP Per caPita: $51,546

(ranks no. 28 nationwide) number of billionaires: 3

richest:

Carl Cook net Worth: $8.1 BILLION

FOR OVER 50 years, cook Group’s catheters, filters and stents have helped patients get healthy, and proceeds from their sales make up the bulk of heir and ceo carl cook’s fortune. lately, though, the company’s iVc filters, spider-shaped devices used to prevent blood clots, have been at the center of roughly 3,000 lawsuits from patients alleging that they’re faulty. the company won its first trial in november after a jury determined that the plaintiff—a patient whose filter got stuck inside her, causing internal injuries—failed to prove the filter was defective. but cook, which insists its filters work, will face at least two more trials in 2018.

the cook clan has long kept a low profile. carl’s founder father, bill, hated being on the forbes 400. “every nut in the book is going to be after me now,” a colleague recalled him saying after joining the list in 1988, according to a 2008 biography, The Bill Cook Story: Ready,

Fire, Aim! carl, 55, has a similar attitude. “Whenever [Forbes has] contacted us, we’ve pretty much told them to go to hell,” he said in the book. true to form, cook wouldn’t comment for this story.