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Rigas, John death News_20211017pA13TampaBayTimes

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John rigas died Sept 30 2021 in Coudersport hospital. Tampa Bay Times, Sunday 17 Oct 2021
Tampa Bay Times
St. Petersburg, Florida •
Sun, Oct 17, 2021 pA13
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wetzupdoc • 56 seconds ago

• BY JIA LYNN YANG
Washington Post John J. Rigas, who built Adelphia Communications into the country’s sixth-largest cable com- pany and whose 2007 jailing for stealing millions of dollars from the firm made him a prominent example of corporate fraud and excess, died Sept. 30 at a hospital in Coudersport, Pa. The death was confirmed by William Brennan of the Thomas E. Fickinger Funeral Home in Coudersport.

The cause was not disclosed. Rigas, who at one time owned the Buffalo Sabres NHL hockey fran- chise, served nine years of a 15-year sentence - later reduced to 12 - for securities fraud, convicted of what the Securities and Exchange Com- mission called “one of the most extensive financial frauds ever to take place at a public company.” He was granted compassionate release from the Allenwood federal prison in Pennsylvania in 2016, when he was 91 and was said to have terminal cancer. It was a humiliating fall for Rigas. The son of Greek immigrants, he started his cable business for $300 in 1952 and boldly transformed a shoestring operation in the north-central Pennsylvania town of Coudersport into a corporate juggernaut. He was heralded as an industry pioneer, having gambled on cable’s potential long before Comcast, AT&T and other big corporate players dominated the market.

Over time, he brought his three sons, Timothy, Michael and James, into the business and extended the company into New York, New Jersey, Florida and California. Rigas made his riskiest acquisition in 1999, paying $5.2 billion for Century Communications, the largest cable provider in Los Angeles at the time. The deal doubled the size of Adelphia overnight, and the com- pany boasted 5.6 million customers in 30 states. But within a few years, amid corporate scandals that engulfed such other firms as Enron and WorldCom, Adelphia collapsed after regulators began investigating shady accounting practices at the firm. John Rigas, 96 Cable television magnate went to prison for fraud John Rigas.

United States
Florida
St. Petersburg
Tampa Bay Times
2021
Oct
17
Page A13
John rigas died Sept 30 2021 in Coudersport hospital. Tampa Bay Times, Sunday 17 Oct 2021

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