Posted on 08/06/2022 10:31:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A billionaire software developer who was fighting the biggest individual tax evasion case in US history died at his home in Houston Friday, according to reports.
Robert Brockman, 81, a self-taught software entrepreneur who developed a system that helped car dealers run their operations virtually, had been fighting IRS allegations of money laundering and tax evasion worth more than $2 billion since 2020.
Prosecutors said that Brockman, who had a personal net worth of $4.7 billion, owned an $8 million mansion in Houston, a Colorado ski cabin, a Bormbardier jet and a 209 foot yacht, named “Turmoil.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Now the ghouls will feast on the estate, no doubt.
Rush used to joke that he wanted to spend all his money and then his last check would go to the IRS. And the check would bounce.
I wonder if Brockman actually did it.
RIP.
Not really.
Remember the Enron situation? A jury returned guilty verdicts against Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron. A long interval was scheduled between the verdicts and the sentencing hearing. Lay was permitted to travel to a mountain home in Colorado to wait out the interval before retuning to Houston to be sentenced. He had heart conditions for which he cardiac medications. During the interval he simply stopped taking the medications, knowing full well that the risk of a heart attack was increased. He indeed died of a heart attack before being sentenced. At the time of his death an appeal had been filed, and the convictions were vacated. The net effect of that was - his estate retained a lot more $$$ than if he had been convicted and sentenced (the sentence would have been prison time, fines and restitution.)
This dude had not been convicted at the time of his death, so it’s bonus time for his heirs.
I was reading that he had been diagnosed with dementia - yet a federal judge ruled in May 2022 that he was competent to stand trial...
Both cases, Enron and WorldCom, were Securities Fraud, not tax evasion.
He was also apparently qualified to be "president".
Worldcom and Bernie Ebbers is quite the story! I was in the industry at the time and with another large company in that space (but primarily in a different region). I had first-hand knowledge of the company's growth and the Ebbers success story. It was real -- at least up to the MCI/Worldcom debacle.
Bernie was a very smart man and grew LDDS, which began as mostly a mom & pop business, to capture/acquire a top space in the industry. Regardless of the MCI/Worldcom debacle, he was the driving force in growing the company. It is truly a rags to riches to rags again story.
It is still unclear to me who knew and who did not know about the creative accounting. It does seem clear that Scott Sullivan absolutely was the driver behind that effort. Who knew beyond Sullivan is not that clear, though. And, no, a New York jury conviction of Ebbers is not necessarily proof Ebbers was the man.
Anyway, you should read Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower (click here). It is quite the story!
At MCI we had seen how to successfully merge companies in the past with the purchases of Western Union International, Satellite Business Systems, RCA Global, and Telecom*USA (along with guys from Metrotel I had worked with at ITT). Each time as regulators allowed, interconnections were made between networks, redundant routes were eliminated, best practices and systems were adopted, the sales forces were merged, and every acquisition was leveraged for the purpose of making us better.
At the time I'll never forget being shocked that the SBS technicians appeared to take us over in the blink of an eye. Richard Liebhaber came over from SBS and became the EVP. He controlled Operations with an iron gauntlet. We had two SBS guys at our site who ran circles around the rest of us. It was the best thing that ever could have happened at MCI.
The point is that when WorldCom took over, nothing happened. We were all left to wonder why. All we ever saw from Bernie Ebbers was niggling micromanagement. Synergy never happened while the school teacher from Arkansas planed his next buyout.
Of course he had to lie about our success, Of course he had to fail.
We all have different perspectives. I came from a predecessor to Telecom*USA. Actually, our company and McClod's company was the merger that formed Telecom*USA. We also grew through gobbling up (consolidating) the smaller mom and pops. Acquisitions/mergers are tough for those left behind and even for those who need to make them successful. We did that with a lot of hard work, sleepless nights and a little blood that got spilled along the way :-).
As we (and LDDS) grew, we did it in the shadow of MCI -- which was obviously hugely successful competing with ATT in its own right. In fact, some of the top management from our company became top management at MCI for a while. I'm not sure when they departed. They were sure gone by the time of Worldcom, though.
I agree with much of what you said about Bernie. But, don't forget where he came from and what he accomplished in order to acquire MCI. A builder is not always a manager. If he is smart, he finds those managers and gets out of their way. WorldCom made a lot of people rich -- for a while. And, of course, many went broke. The bottom line is Bernie grew it, and then it outgrew him. That takes a special person.
I'll never forget hearing of customers cancelling service from one of us because they were dissatisfied and going to our other entity, cha-ching!
Of course within a year we merged together like a Borg collective and I worked with many former T*USA employees and glad of it. I remember all of MCI was merged into the T*USA trouble ticket reporting system for all of its advantages over what we had been using. It was many years before the old T*USA campus in Florida was vacated and sold off.
Through all this history, it was an odd thing to be employed and seeing our WorldCom stock drop to pennies even Michael Milken wouldn't touch. One thing Bernie Ebbers could not get his hands on was our former MCI pension. After we all became Verizon employees with their 401k plan, I ended up with a shockingly good severance package and close to $100,000.00 that was in that MCI pension fund. God bless that rascal Bill McGowan for giving us a pilfer proof retirement plan.
My tenure was from about 1981 until 1987, so I'm not sure how the merger with MCI came off. Our CEO ended up as CFO for MCI. He was a capable guy with a successful career in building public companies in telecommunications and selling or merging them.
His background was not finance but technology/engineering. Namely, fiber optics, microwave, and satellite services. A very smart (high IQ), successful guy that helped us build over 1300 miles of fiber optic cable up the east coast -- and that was before fiber was what it is today. The technology was gee-whiz but the big challenge was getting it in the ground or in the air.
By the way, I could (almost) throw a rock and hit the MCI headquarters in Atlanta at the time. In fact, when our fiber became operational, we sold capacity to many carriers -- including MCI.
Glad you came out of it okay. I left in 87 before our merger to form US Telecom. The Telecom*USA merger became effective right after I left. We were public, and I owned a little stock, so I came out okay as well.
Circle 75 Parkway is the street that circles around the south and east side of The Atlanta Braves' Truist Park. Back then all that was there was a lake with a walking track around it and woods behind and around it.
Gene was one very smart man. He was tough but usually always made the right decisions.
By the way, are you still in Atlanta?
The Enron case was more than Ken Lay. Yes, he stopped his meds and died. Then they tried to take down the CFO of Enron. He was lucky. He had married into a family with a lot of money and strong ties to the court and had given much to local museums - with hope that they would continue to donate millions to their charities. The CFO and his wife were given a slap on the wrist and sentenced to a couple of years in addiction clinics.
With no one else to blame - even tho all the fake companies in the Enron skam were named after the CFO’s family members - they went after Ken Skilling the president who had quit the year earlier.
Our nation is no longer a rule of laws, it’s a nation of lawers.
For about 41 years now, but I spent my early years in Rome, about 50 miles away from where I live right now.
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