Broadcom billionaire loses fight to keep e-mail on drug use secret

Billionaire Broadcom founder Henry Nicholas lost his fight to keep the following email message from being admitted as evidence in his trial for "21 counts of conspiring to commit accounting and securities fraud by misreporting $2.2 billion in employee stock options." You can't blame him for trying.

An Email Visit with Broadcom's Henry Nicholas

[edgore January 9, 2009 10:24 AM]

Please, please, please tell me this was not sent from a work accout.

Or please do...I think that will actually make me happier (though more appalled)

[Keeper of the Lantern January 9, 2009 10:25 AM]

That's by no means the most Soulless thing a Billionare has ever written, if indeed he wrote it. At least his fuckup was arguably due to a drug addiction rather than more traditional, insatiable blind greed.

My advice to the youngins continues to be:

1. Never trust a junkie.
2. Never trust anyone who's never been a junkie.

[Brandon West January 9, 2009 10:42 AM]

@2 I'm not sure I like your advice. The only trustworthy people are former junkies, so get an early start on being a junkie, kiddos.

[zikzak January 9, 2009 10:43 AM]

@keeper: I think you underestimate the percentage of business and government elites who are habitual drug users.

In an environment as hypercompetitive and high-pressure as managing a company, who wouldn't need something to keep them focused and energetic every day, and then something to knock them out every night?

[gtop January 9, 2009 10:43 AM]

Mr. Keeper, if both drug addiction and money addiction lead to the destruction of other people's lives and happiness, how is it that one is morally superior to the other? My guess is that you've been a junkie, but ya ain't never been rich.

[Ugly Canuck January 9, 2009 10:47 AM]

Which drugs? They are all so different...was he a ketamine kind of guy, or was he addicted to peyote?

[CB January 9, 2009 10:56 AM]

I'm going to guess coke and sleeping pills.

[chromecow January 9, 2009 11:00 AM]

@#1

Edgore, your wish is granted:

"Carney also said Nicholas can not claim privilege, because the e-mail was composed on a Broadcom computer without password protection; that it was circulated among several Broadcom employees and well-known to federal investigators; and that it was described in an Nov. 15, 2008, article in the Orange County Register."

[edgore January 9, 2009 11:24 AM]

@chromecow

Thanks for the additional information. While it still does not positively confirm that he sent it from a work email account (he could have, for example, sent it from a personal Yahoo account using a work computer), the fact he sent it from a work computer at all is enough to restore my faith in the competence of highly compensated executives everywhere. And who has non-password protected company computers? That is just asking for trouble.

[edgore January 9, 2009 11:28 AM]

@Ugly Canuck

If I recall correctly Mr. Nicolas is accused of having a warehouse full of ecstasy and meth (some of which he would use to randomly spoke the drinks of other executives). Unfortuantely I have just had lunch and am too sedentary too use teh googles to confirm this.

[swanksalot January 9, 2009 11:31 AM]

Coke and Ecstasy, per the LA Times

[Loraan January 9, 2009 11:31 AM]

@#6: "Addicted to peoyte"? Are you kidding me? I can't imagine a person being addicted to a hallucinogen like peyote.

[George Parr January 9, 2009 11:36 AM]

cocaine, weed and Ecstacy, apparently. Lots more in the "related stories" links at the bottom of those pages. This is the guy who, with a couple of pals, smoked so much weed on their private jet that the pilots had to use oxygen masks!!

Well /I'm/ a junkie* (tho I'm not proud to say so), & to us fools "cold turkey" means... brown. I used to have a serious** coke habit, and coming off that was purely psychological. Coming off aitchy is FAR more prolonged, tedious, and uncomfortable process, even when cushioned with buprenorphine, and you won't be doing it in a week. A week of comedown sounds more like the result of a hard weekend of double - dropping Mitsies (or whatever the kids call E these days).

Ironically enough I now work in computer security, so I know that anything you do on your work computer is fair game - legally AND morally speaking IMO. that defintely includes senior management. (I've been involved with, uh, investigations that lead to a rich powerful man getting unceremoniously fired partly through evidence in email and web traffic logs.)

(* ...a very untypical one. I smoke, not shoot. I binge for 2 days, recover for 4, then stay clean for 3 - 6 months before sliding down the greasy pole of my depravity once more. There are unique circumstances that make this a sustainable lifestyle in the medium term, at least, so my ability to hold down a well-paid job and a relatively normal life 12 weeks out of 13 without ending up mugging grannies to pay for the next hit should not be misread as any sort of suggestion that a smack habit is a good idea. Also, I'm not fooling myself that I'm not addicted, just because I'm not sick/craving when I'm not using.)

** ("serious", meaning, that I nearly lost my job & probably would have, if my then-employer hadn't gone broke & folded... which didn't stop me spending all my savings and then running up an overdraft feeding the monkey).

[Ugly Canuck January 9, 2009 11:38 AM]

thanx Ed. So it's crank...
Spiking others' drinks, eh? That is very out-of-bounds.

[dragonfrog January 9, 2009 11:40 AM]

Ugly Canuck @6 - You probably know this, but peyote isn't addictive (to my knowledge, none of the psychedelics are). I understand peyote also involves intense vomiting and something like a 24 hour trip.

In fact, psychedelics can supposedly be quite effective in treating addictions, as their (typically guided) use can help people deal with underlying traumas and insecurities that led them into addiction. Basically they can amplify the effectiveness of a psychiatric session, or even allow people to realize on their own what they might not otherwise have realized without psychiatric help.

I have a darkly amusing picture now of a billionaire executive coming to work, in the grip of a relentlessly revelatory shamanic psychedelic trip. I just can't imagine a mega-greedhead executive lasting long like that. After one or two trips, the cognitive dissonance would be so severe that he would have to reounce either his job, or contemplative religion, psychedelics, hiking, and any other practices that would put him at risk of confronting the darkness of his world...

[IWood January 9, 2009 11:44 AM]

God, my pre-lunch crack pipe is really fucking with my ability to land these aircraft in an orderly fashion. I feel bad for the passengers...but I'll be quitting air traffic control soon, so whatever.

[Brainspore January 9, 2009 11:45 AM]

The drug admissions in this email aren't nearly as incriminating or relevant as all the references to "lying" and "bullshitting." After all he's on trial for fraud, not drug use.

[toxonix January 9, 2009 11:59 AM]

#2 posted by Keeper of the Lantern

Blind Greed is the motive.
The 'getting off drugs' excuse is the cover story he's telling everyone, including himself.

Once this all blows over he's going to get obliterated on whatever substance he can get his greedy hands on.

[Ugly Canuck January 9, 2009 11:59 AM]

But Brainspore this thread is about the 'juicy tidbits', n'est-ce pas?

[jimh January 9, 2009 12:02 PM]

Brainspore, I immediately thought the same, and that the title of the post should read "Broadcom billionaire loses fight to keep e-mail on fraud secret"

[Anonymous January 9, 2009 12:03 PM]

There's an innocent explanation for that email.

[Sean Grimm January 9, 2009 12:13 PM]

Does everyone send self incriminating e-mail to people they know or just the ones that are defrauding multinational corporations, investors, etcetc? Follow up question--Do people think e-mails self destruct like they're some kind of Inspector Gadget message?

[Brandon West January 9, 2009 12:20 PM]

@21 - You mean my emails don't explode in Chief Quimby's face after I hit send?

[Brainspore January 9, 2009 12:26 PM]

Canuck, I agree that the drug references are a good part of what make the email so juicy. But the blatant admissions of dishonesty are what make it relevant to his trial, and his biggest motivation for trying to keep the email secret.

[Takuan January 9, 2009 12:55 PM]

so funny; the WaronSomeDrugs Industry has worked so hard to have all the peons and slaves regularly tested, but never has there been a real push to ensure the most powerful in society were.

[Keeper of the Lantern January 9, 2009 12:59 PM]

GTOP/All:

My adivce was meant to be kinda funny, although with a hint of seriousness: Sometimes it's hard to tell what your weaknesses are unless you've basically had them in control of your life.

And as I work in a big corporate environment (and also know fully well what drug addiction looks like in somebody), I'd say that the number of CEOs habitually using the "hard" drugs is actually quite small these days.

As for the straights who claim I was trying to make some moral statement about drug addiction being superior to greed, well come to think of it I suppose I was. If you are accustomed to thinking of drug usage and all of the personality/lifestyle transformations they incur as a "disease", you find it kind of hard to place behavior like this in the same category as, for instance, Maddox's (or whatever his name is).

Moreover, I would say that a habitual drug user if dry/clean might not make the same mistakes they would when using.

This guy seems to found enough honesty to recognize the damage he was doing and had done, and was trying to "fix" it. He seemed to be dimly morally aware, and that's I think better than many of the slash-and-burn bungie CEOs out there. It's something, anyway.

[Keeper of the Lantern January 9, 2009 1:10 PM]

TOXONIX:
Well, if you're saying that the drug angle was bullshit (and really an attempt to cover up out-and-out fraud by claiming an addiction defense), I guess it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

On the other hand, if they found mountains of the stuff in a garage somewhere, then it's also conceivable the guy starting imbibing his own product and then everything else spun out of control.

Can you get addicted to Ecstacy? (Last time I took it it was legal and we got shipments from the inventor in Boston!)

[edgore January 9, 2009 1:11 PM]

@Sean Grimm

I think the thing is that we just never hear about it except in the high profile cases, like the ones that are defrauding multinational corporations, investors, etcetc.

I am quite sure that all sorts of people email incredibly incriminating things to each other, frequently from the work email accounts

The only other stuff we hear about is the stuff that has purient interest, like British people emailing each other about their sex lives.

[Anonymous January 9, 2009 1:12 PM]

"I am willing to lie and bullshit"

That sums it up right there.

[Anonymous January 9, 2009 3:09 PM]

And I thought only movie and video game super-villains did the whole 'let me discuss the finer points of my evil plan while giving you time to escape' thing, not real people.

[avraamov January 9, 2009 3:20 PM]

i find this refreshingly honest.

[davevontexas January 9, 2009 3:22 PM]

Welp, I guess that explains the BCM43xx series firmware.

[Master Gracey January 9, 2009 4:28 PM]

CHROMECOW wrote:

"Carney also said Nicholas can not claim privilege, because the e-mail was composed on a Broadcom computer without password protection; that it was circulated among several Broadcom employees and well-known to federal investigators; and that it was described in an Nov. 15, 2008, article in the Orange County Register."

How can you prove he wrote it if he didn't have to log in to the computer to send it?

Seriously, this sounds like something a person would share with their shrink, and if this was an email sent to, say, his psychiatrist or therapist, I find it hard to accept that simply because a work computer was used to send it. People often use work phones, computers for personal use - I doubt that makes the communications the "property" of the company...

[Anonymous January 9, 2009 4:41 PM]

For God's sake, there's such a thing as common sense - you don't write incriminating details down. The Mob knew to meet each other face to face in places they couldn't be overheard.

Frankly the carelessness of the details revealed in that would be suspicious to police investigating a suicide note. It's crazy to think that it's not going to come back to haunt you later. If it's written down it can be read - maybe not directly to a court like this but by someone.

[Brainspore January 9, 2009 4:46 PM]

How can you prove he wrote it if he didn't have to log in to the computer to send it?

I bet he and his attorney are beating themselves up for not thinking of that before they went for the "confidentiality" approach, which in effect confirms that he did write it. Best to deny it early or not bother denying it at all.

[Anumati January 9, 2009 4:55 PM]

@ #15

Isn't that the plot of a Spider Robinson novel?

In regards to the addictiveness of hallucinogens, I think it's good to remember there's two kinds of addiction. No one injects a slot machine into their veins, yet surely there are gambling addicts out there.

It's not unreasonable to consider that some people might display addictive behavior around hallucinogen consumption, even though there is no physical addiction mechanism.

[edgore January 9, 2009 8:36 PM]

"No one injects a slot machine into their veins, yet surely there are gambling addicts out there. "

Pfft! You obviously need access to larger syringes. Crap...what is going to happen when that hits my heart?

[Ugly Canuck January 10, 2009 6:01 AM]

"Addiction" was a word in common use long before the chemical nature of matter (and hence the very concept of any individuals' physical dependence on a substance) had been elucidated. The term was adopted by biochemists in the 20th C. and in the context of drug use has a more specific and technical meaning - it has been jargonized.
Yet to state that a person is eg. addicted to religion, or to rapine, is not an improper use of the word, as such a use predates the advent of 19th century chemistry.
That drugs which can lead to physical (bio-chemical) addiction are more dangerous to use than others, and thus are to be treated as 'worse' by society than those that are not so, is belied by the legal status of both tobacco and alcohol.
in the context of drugs and their use the meaning of the term "addiction" contracts from the scope of its common meaning. This leads to confusion....one can be addicted to chocolate or sex or the internet, but not in the chemical sense...
OTOH I'd like to see a billionaire peyote addict's violently colorful office, with his Mexican crystal vomit bucket, though.., or maybe the ketamine addict, operating his financial empire from deep in the K-hole...

[Keeper of the Lantern January 10, 2009 7:46 AM]

Well, UC,
I continue to find myself surprised at how few people don't know that going cold turkey from alcohol dependency can lead to death (likewise for barbituates), hence "rehab" is actually necessary.

Heroin withdrawal is, for the most part, not dangerous though it is apparently extremely unpleasant.

In either case, however, I think the demonizing of addictions (and the people who have them) comes from most people's reactions to the personality and lifestyle changes, which they believe are the cause of the addiction rather than much more of a symptom.

[Ugly Canuck January 10, 2009 8:06 AM]

Oh and don't get me started about money addiction and what happens upon withdrawal of that...

[Ugly Canuck January 10, 2009 8:32 AM]

Cluing in the clueless: Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine