Dennis Kozlowski became a caricature of corporate greed after allegedly using company funds to buy impossibly priced things, including a $15,000 umbrella stand and a $6,300 sewing basket for his $19 million New York apartment.
The company he led, Tyco, is a conglomerate that runs a security business, yet it couldn’t even protect its own shareholders from a money-grubbing CEO.
Kozlowski paid himself $81 million in unauthorized bonuses.
He was renowned for the $2 million party he threw for his wife’s 40th birthday in June 2001 on the Italian island of Sardinia. He hired Jimmy Buffett and a staff of toga-wearing waiters. He ordered an ice sculpture shaped like Michelangelo’s David that dispensed vodka from its penis.
In September 2005, Kozlowski was convicted on charges that he looted Tyco and manipulated its stock. Chief Financial Officer Mark Swartz was also convicted.
Kozlowski served more than six and a half years in New York state prisons, and he was ordered to pay $167 million in restitution and fines.
In March 2007, he granted a jailhouse interview to “60 Minutes” in which he claimed a jury sent him to prison for being rich.
“I was a guy sitting in a courtroom making $100 million a year,” Kozlowski said. “And I think a juror sitting there just would have to say, ‘All that money? He must have done something wrong.’”