Practically everybody partied too hard during the 1990s. But Broadcom founder, and billionaire, Henry Nicholas, partied harder than most. Two indictments came down today on Nicholas. One for back-dating stock options that cost the company $2.2 billion in accounting charges last year, and the other for, well, partying too hard (the indictment mentions cocaine, Ecstacy, and prostitutes). The LA Times reports:
A federal grand jury has indicted Henry T. Nicholas III on fraud charges, according to documents unsealed today that also accuse the Orange County billionaire of supplying customers with prostitutes and drugs and slipping Ecstacy into the drinks of unwitting technology executives.
“Defendant Nicholas spiked the drinks of others with MDMA (ecstacy) without their knowledge, including . . . the drinks of technology executives and representatives who worked for Broadcom’s customers,” the indictment alleged without identifying the victims.
On a flight from Orange County to Las Vegas aboard a private plane, the government alleges, Nicholas used and distributed drugs, “causing marijuana smoke to enter the cockpit and requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask.”
Nicholas, who stepped down as Broadcom’s chief executive in 2003, surrendered to the FBI this morning, said Pete Norell, a supervising FBI special agent in Santa Ana
Nicholas is alleged to have used death threats and payoffs to conceal his “unlawful conduct.” In June 2002, he reached a $1-million “settlement agreement” with an unnamed Broadcom employee who knew about his alleged illegal drug activity, according to the indictment.
It lists three properties described in previous Times reports about Nicholas’ alleged indulgences in drugs and prostitutes:
* An equestrian estate in Laguna Hills, where Nicholas had constructed a warren of tunnels and underground rooms, including one that contractors alleged was intended to become a secret “sex lair.”
* A warehouse-office complex in nearby Laguna Niguel, which contractors said was used for the same purposes and nicknamed “The Ponderosa.”
* A Newport Coast residence where Nicholas was trying to start a record company and where rock groups frequently visited.
Filling a plane with so much pot smoke that the pilot had to put on an oxygen mask? You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
Back in 1999, when some of these deeds are alleged to have occurred, I wrote a story about Broadcom for Fortune. Nicholas certainly was intense. He once boasted to me that he held the record for going without sleep at the company to meet a project deadline: 78 hours. I dug up the quote of him explaining how he did that:
It’s not as bad as you might think. Once you find your circadian rhythm, you can put your head down for an hour and a half, enter into a deep REM cycle, and get most of the cognitive benefits of sleep. We learned this at the Air Force Academy.
A little Ecstacy helps too.
(Photo by Richard Hartog/LA Times).
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Evil and stupid!
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Slipping mind alerting drugs like MDMA in people’s drinks is a terrible crime and a really unfair thing to do to anyone, and not just ‘partying hard.’ Your headline and account of this is discouraging, and considering the number of readers Techcrunch enjoys, irresponsible.
that was supposed to be ‘mind altering’
techcrunch has just become valleywag
Is this Robert Downy Junior’s real character in Iron Man?
cocaine hookers eh?
Wow, this guy seems like a real animal. I love the quote about REM sleep and staying up for 78 hours. Don’t they also give Air Force Cadets and pilots ritalin to stay awake?
I love that on the Broadcom website, under Social Responsibility, it states this:
“We understand our success as a company depends not only on our industry leading technological innovations, but also on our unique contributions to the global community at large and local communities in which we live and work.”
I’d agree that Henry’s “contributions” were most definitely “unique” (though I probably wouldn’t classify those contributions as social responsibility).
there’s an amazing article about this guy’s private cave and the parties he had there….
http://www.latimes.com/busines.....ome-center
Hey Techcrunch
You guys have to do a comparison photo—Nichols is straight out of the character in Die Hard. The a –hole that works with Willis’ ex wife and tries to negotiate with the Bad guys before getting whacked
Hart Bochner was the actor and was the greatest sleazeball of all time
pic here
http://www.aveleyman.com
he looks like Nichols and they should pull him out of retirement to plays Nichols in a lifetime movie
“Hans…. buppy”
So … All I want to know is WTF was he still doing in the U.S …
You have all that money .. J u s t D o I t
It isn’t still the 90s.
way to “blow” it!
The headline mentions cocaine, but the rest of the entry doesn’t mention it once.
Poor reporting.
It’s true you can condition yourself to plunge right into REM mode and wake up in an hour just as refreshed as a nights sleep.
Btw, this guy is a giant! whatever his intake, it’ll be almost deadly for anyone half his size haha
dude, is TC looking to get into reality television next? this is such BS reporting. What is this blog really about? anything?
Agreed.
TechCrunch is increasingly irrelevant.
This guy rules. To all of you whining about irrelevancy, you’re basically a waste of space. I can’t wait for the masses of the nerd surge from the last 7 years to get beaten back where they belong.
If you’re not working your ass off for cocaine and whores, then what’s the goddamn point? You people disgust me…
One of my new hero’s in being a complete heodinistic asshole. I had already read about the secret sex dungeon before but had sort of forgot about it.
Henry Nicholos III is a true pioneer in every sense of the word. He revolutionized the telecommunications industry, and would have probably made Broadcom bigger than Intel in the semidonductor space, had he not been so unfairly dismissed from his post.
Sometimes true brilliance goes unappreciated. Consider how much wealth and jobs he generated for the national economy. And how do we treat him? With a jail sentence.
lol @19 …the comments are better than the article.
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Well…he can become a Cocaine Billionaire very soon if he wants. Why is Tech Crunch talking about all this? What happened to you guys? Did you lose direction?…remember you folks were/are supposed to review start ups in the web 2.0 sphere.
What percentage of TC comments complain about TC, its writers, Mike’s “bad attitude” or something completely irrelevant to the story?
My guess is 60%.
Why shouldn’t TC cover this? This blog has evolved, and become so much more than it was already intended so get over it. As far as the drug use… Big deal, everyone that founded this country was on drugs, now it’s bad? Okay bud I will keep doin blow and weed, and smoking my crack and LSD and shrooms bud let me tell you. jk but seriously.
@ Robert Downey Jr’s character from Tropic Thunder ( http://TropicThunder.com ) is surely what this is actually based on.
@6*
Also where is Loren Feldman’s comment? He is the smartest person on TechCrunch, and only his opinion should be considered.
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Baah Baah The-black-Sheep
This is too bad; He could’ve been Ironman…
@chrys - pure comedy.
Erick. Love your posts. Seriously…this is great stuff for a highly respected tech writer. More rumors please! Nobody cares about the xy startup anymore anyways.
Oh come on, this is funny. Quit your complaining, commenters.
2nd lol @chrys
hey, chrys - you hiring?
It appears that a video of the pilot cabin was found on the Internet as well
Warning: The smoke appears to have kicked in already so this is NSFW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg8UTBphE7A
Don’t be a player hater…
It turns out NBC’s online video strategy is useful after all…
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Ni.....mea=229047
Nice gossip - who cares!!
Nice to see the an article on THE COOLEST MOFO ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. If I was a billionaire I would have TWO sex caves, ecstasy, hookers, and tell my pilot enjoy.
Does this guy remind anybody of Tom Cruise?
This guy rocks
I wish my boss would put free MDMA into my drinks
normal life was no challenge, huge amount of energy and drive, what do you expect him to do in a land of pygmies?
Erick.. maybe it was the coke for 78 hours, but if your rolling trying to do work… I can tell you its not gonna get done.
Thats unless his project was sleeping with as many hookers as possible!
What a loser. Here is a guy that could have had anything & he only wanted the women that anyone one can have for a price. Lame.
You can keep the cocaine…
yo man, now whadrong will a lil’ a lilel excstsasy and some dope and druggs, and pussy yea, now relax and acalm down, ya’ll???
Ya like the easy life, gotta have it all, ain’t no price not good now, is it mama
Nicky baby rocks, cool man. Out.
nice….to someone who said if you are not working for cocaine and hookers what are you working for? that’s exactly right my friend and I’ll also have an island in the pacific that is undetectable….so when shit hits the fan I’m outta here
good role model eh…not really but he sure knew how to party!
Ecstasy is a very powerful drug that can eventually make some people go mad. It appears that Henry Nicholas was already an eccentric way before becoming a billionaire and it is unfortunate that such a brilliant and driven man appears to have gone on a downward spiral because of drugs, if the allegations against him are true. I personally believe that, as his top lawyer states, “the feds are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him” in order to nail him on something. This is the same lawyer that defended Clinton at his impeachment trial so Nicholas has one of the bet lawyers in the country to defend him along with a very, very powerful defense team. He is innocent until proven guilty so we have to give the guy a break and watch how this thing plays out in court before throwing him to the lions.
Now we know what they really meant back in the dot com era when Wall Street analysts claimed being “ecstatic” about BRCM!
Hey Henry, I think I found a typo in your datasheets… they specify “Power Dissipation” whereby I think you meant “POWDER distribution”!
Perhaps if we had worked at Fraudcom we’d have had the “right stuff” to keep the creative juices flowing…
An asshole with money is still an asshole. You assholes idolize him because he has money and because you saw his picture online. But if he spiked the drink of someone you cared about it would be a different story. Well maybe not because you are assholes.