SEATTLE — No one climbed the list of American billionaires faster than Sheldon Adelson. And this year no one is falling quicker.

This week, a year after saying critics of his expansion strategy for casino company Las Vegas Sands Corp. were wrong, Adelson was forced to slow or suspend new projects from Macau to Pennsylvania. And after investing $475 million of his family's money in the company in September, he said he will put up another $525 million to avoid bankruptcy.

Even so, it's too early to count out the 75-year-old entrepreneur, longtime associates say.

"If the world came to an end, there would be cockroaches and Sheldon," said David Kaminer, 64, a former vice president at an Adelson operation that ran the Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas. "And Sheldon would immediately ... open a pest-control company."

As the credit crunch and economic decline squeeze gambling's growth, he risks the loss of some of his top properties, said John Staszak, an analyst with Argus Research Corp. in New York.

"He's bought time" with the new capital infusion, said Staszak, who has a "sell" rating on the company's stock. "The future is not good, quite frankly."

Adelson's company, best-known for the Venetian casino on the Las Vegas Strip, lost $32 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30. It said Tuesday it will raise $1.62 billion from sales of preferred stock, warrants and 181.8 million common shares at $5.50 each. That increased the outstanding common stock by more than 50 percent.

That day the shares, which peaked at $144 in October 2007, fell $2.66 to $5.34, taking their one-year decline to 95 percent. The value of Adelson's two-thirds stake fell to less than $2 billion — after surpassing $32 billion last year.

Underlining what's at risk for Adelson and his company, the government of Macau — the Chinese gambling hub where Las Vegas Sands collects two-thirds of sales — said Tuesday that it would take over any casino that goes bankrupt.

The son of a Lithuanian immigrant taxi driver, Adelson grew up in Boston where he shared a one-bedroom apartment with his parents, two brothers and a sister, Kaminer said. After selling newspapers and bagels as a teen, he worked as an ad salesman, investment adviser and magazine publisher before founding Comdex in 1979. The $800 million sale of his trade-show company gave him the cash to build a casino empire.

He delighted in his run up the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans after he took Las Vegas Sands public in 2004. Ranked No. 60 in 2004, with a net worth of $3 billion, he reached No. 3 in 2006, with $20.5 billion. That year, he said he'd already figured out when he would pass Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates to top the list.

During this period, Adelson got rich faster than anyone in history, "making just under $1 million an hour," said Peter W. Bernstein, co-author of "All the Money in the World," a study of billionaires on the Forbes list.

Forbes recalculated its rich list for the Oct. 27 issue and found Adelson's fortune dropped $4 billion from Aug. 29 to Oct. 1, the steepest decline for any American who lost at least $1 billion. Since Las Vegas Sands stock peaked, Adelson lost about $3.5 million an hour, counting just the value of his stake.

Gaming revenue for Las Vegas Strip casinos fell for the eighth straight month in August from a year earlier, the longest streak of declines since records began in 1983, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board in Carson City. Macau felt the contraction as the number of visitors was off 10 percent in September.

Adelson bet more heavily on Macau than any other U.S. casino, pledging $12 billion for new hotels, casinos and condominiums to create a mass-market tourist destination like Las Vegas. The Sands Macao was the first Vegas-style casino to open there in 2004, followed three years later by the Venetian Macao. Work has started on five other developments, among them a tower called Shangri-La.

His decisions went against the grain of other casino operators, who were pulling back. As the subprime credit crisis worsened, Adelson was opening a 50-floor tower called the Palazzo adjacent to the Venetian in Las Vegas, making the 7,093-room complex the largest hotel and resort in the world.

Steve Wynn, chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd., delayed expansion of the Wynn Macau after the Chinese government began restricting visas in April 2007. Adelson called Wynn's decision "wrong" in August 2007.

Wynn Resorts has withstood the dip in gambling revenue better than the Las Vegas Sands and replaced it as the largest casino operator by market value last month. Adelson's hotel slipped to third place, behind Wynn and MGM Mirage.