John Rigas and Adelphia: $2.3 Billion in Hidden Debt, the Sabres and Prison

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In 1952 John Rigas and his brother Gus paid $300 for a cable television franchise in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, stringing wire down from hilltop antennas to homes the mountains cut off from broadcast signals. Two decades later they incorporated as Adelphia, Greek for brothers, and by 1998 the company had 2 million subscribers plus internet and phone services. After going public, Rigas still ran it like a family shop. In 1997 he bought the Buffalo Sabres as an individual, but Adelphia funds quietly covered the team's losses, and in 1999 Adelphia bought the naming rights to the Tennessee Titans' stadium in Nashville, the Adelphia Coliseum.

On March 27, 2002, Adelphia revealed $2.3 billion in unrecorded debt from co-borrowing arrangements that let the Rigas family trust, Highland Holdings, take out loans guaranteed by the public company. The SEC called it one of the most extensive financial frauds ever at a public company. Rigas resigned in May 2002, and in 2005 he and his son Timothy, the CFO, were convicted and sentenced to 15 and 20 years. Unlike other frauds of that era, the family never sold its Adelphia stock. Adelphia's bankruptcy was the 12th largest in U.S. history, and the company was sold to Comcast and Time Warner for $17.6 billion. Judge Kimba Wood granted Rigas compassionate release in February 2016, and he lived until September 2021, dying at 96.

• The family took roughly $100 million for personal use, including 17 company cars and large deliveries of Christmas trees.
• They spent $26 million on 3,600 acres of Pennsylvania timberland as a private buffer behind their home.
• The stadium deal was tied to a small commercial phone unit competing with BellSouth in the South.
• John and Timothy Rigas reported to the Butler Federal Correctional Complex in 2007.
• Family members later started Zito Media, a small rural cable company based in Coudersport.