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Intellectual Property Law

: Threat Level

Billionaire Entrepreneur Slipped Drugs To Tech Execs, Feds Allege

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

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Broadcom co-founder and billionaire Henry T. Nicholas lived the life of a hedonist, handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars of coke and Ecstasy at parties in drug dens constructed in houses he owned, supplying prostitutes to employees and clients, and paying off one employee to keep quiet about his partying ways, according to a federal indictment filed Thursday in California.

Broadcom, a manufacturer of integrated circuits, went public in 1998 and now has more than 6,000 employees. In 2007, the company was forced to restate its financial s to the tune of $2.24 billion. In May, the Security and Exchange Commission charged him and three other employees of secretly backdating stock options for over five years.

Among the allegations.

At the Woodstock 1999 concert in Rome, New York, Nicholas drugged an unnamed tech executive with Ecstasy without his knowledge

Nicholas's party planners gave him invoices for drugs, including one bill for $15,000 labeled "party favors for 300 hits of Ecstasy.

In 2000 Nicholas built out a commercial warehouse and office space in Laguna Niguel, California with plush digs, including private rooms, to share and do drugs

In early 2000, while in New Orleans, Nicholas spiked another tech executive's drink with Ecstasy.

In 2001, Nicholas directed subordinates to keep piles of coke, Ecstasy and meth, among other drugs on hand permanently at the Warehouse.

In January 2001, to celebrate the Superbowl at his warehouse, Nicholas bought 225 tabs of Ecstasy.

In 2001, on a private plane headed to Las Vegas, Nicholas and his crew smoked enough pot that the pilot had to don his oxygen mask to escape from the marijuana smoke and fumes.

In 2001, Nicholas directed an employee to give an envelope of $5 to $10K in cash to a drug courier in exchange for an envelope of drugs. This hand-off happened in the lobby of Broadcom's offices in Irvine, California.

In June 2002, Broadcom signed a settlement agreement with an employee, paying out $1 million for silence about Nicholas's illegal drug activities.

From 2003 to 2006, Nicholas and friends conspired to get prescription drugs -- namely Vicoprofen (similar to the pain killer Vicodin) and Valium.

Photo: Associated Press/Damian Dovarganes