Rigases Final Appeal Denied
Supreme Court Rejects Former Adelphia Execs' Appeal Without Comment
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 3/4/2008 2:40:00 AM
Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and son Timothy have run out of appeals.
The executives convicted in the massive accounting fraud case that felled Adelphia, then the nation’s fifth largest cable operator, had their final appeal rejected by the Supreme Court without comment, according to the Associated Press.
Last year, the 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeal in New York upheld their pair’s convictions on 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy in 2004 stemming from the massive accounting scandal at the cable company
John, 83, is currently serving a 15-year prison term, while Tim, Adelphia’s former CFO, was sentenced to 20 years in jail. They began serving their sentences in a North Carolina correctional facility last August.
The collapse of Adelphia enabled Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable to purchase it for $17.4 billion out of bankruptcy in July 2006.
Lawyers for the Rigases argued that fraud charges should be dismissed because accounting terms were not explained to the jury and because they properly followed accounting rules during transactions that the government said were fraudulent.
Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Sand, who also presided over the Rigases’ criminal trial, vetoed a new trial attempt by the two men, who claimed that a key witness for the prosecution, former Adelphia vice president of finance James Brown lied on the stand.
