John Rigas, disgraced cable tycoon, former Sabres owner, dies at 96
He was not on the list.
John James Rigas, the son of Greek
immigrants who built one of the nation’s largest cable TV companies only to
lose it all in a celebrated case of corporate excess, died Thursday, The
Buffalo News confirmed. The cable magnate’s death occurs more than five years
after officials granted his “compassionate release” after eight years in a
federal prison camp at Canaan, Pa., anticipating he would soon die.
But Mr. Rigas beat the odds until
his Thursday death at 96.
Before he and four other company
executives were indicted on fraud charges in 2002, Mr. Rigas was one of
Buffalo’s most admired business figures. He transferred several key components
of his company, Adelphia Communications, from his hometown of Coudersport, Pa.,
to Buffalo. He bought the Buffalo Sabres hockey team. And he planned to build a
multistory corporate headquarters next to the hockey arena, where Harborcenter
now stands.
It all collapsed in 2002 after Mr.
Rigas, his sons Timothy and Michael, and two other executives were accused of
using company funds for personal purposes and hiding $2.3 billion in debt from
their investors. He was forced to step down as Adelphia’s chief executive
officer.
Born in Wellsville in an apartment
above the Texas Hot, a diner operated by his father, he bused tables at the age
of 9. After graduating in 1943 from Wellsville High School, where he earned a
place in its Sports Hall of Fame as a standout in football, basketball,
baseball and track, he enlisted in the Army to fight in World War II. Assigned
to an armored infantry division, he saw combat in France.
Returning from service, he enrolled
in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and earned a bachelor’s degree in
management engineering, which he said served him well in business.
“As I look back over my business career, meeting after
meeting, I can see that I just unconsciously ask, ‘What is the problem? What do
we know? What don’t we know?’ ” he told an interviewer. “That sequential,
engineering approach became one of my strengths in business. I could reach the
heart of the problem a lot quicker than many others.”
Returning home, he went back to work at the Texas Hot, but
soon found an engineering position at Sylvania’s corporate headquarters in
Emporium, Pa., commuting from Wellsville.
In 1951, he borrowed $72,000 from family and friends to
purchase a movie theater in Coudersport, the Potter County seat, halfway
between Emporium and Wellsville. He sold tickets and made popcorn every night
while continuing to work at Sylvania. Many nights, he slept in the theater on a
cot.
Mr. Rigas also launched Adelphia in Coudersport, purchasing
the borough’s cable franchise for $300 in 1952 by overdrawing his bank account.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Adelphia acquired numerous suburban cable TV
systems, avoiding large cities, while taking on huge debt.
Once he told his secretary, “Well, Angie, I’m either going
to become a millionaire or I’m going to go bankrupt.”
As it turns out, he would do both.
Adelphia grew into the fifth-largest cable TV provider in
the nation, with 5.6 million customers across 30 states. The company bought
Buffalo’s cable franchise in 1998, the same year Mr. Rigas acquired the Sabres,
and soon he was seen as a leader in the city’s long-awaited economic comeback.
A 2001 survey of 800 local leaders conducted by The Buffalo News rated him the
region’s most powerful and respected businessman.
His success already had transformed Coudersport. In addition
to bringing 2,000 jobs to the rural community, he was known for his generosity.
He sent checks to the needy. He flew cancer patients for
treatments at the Cleveland and Mayo clinics in his corporate planes. He and
his workers plowed snow and cut lawns for senior citizens. The Rigases
supported Cole Memorial Hospital, refurbished downtown buildings and restored
the town’s Lady of Justice statue. Every December, he brought either the
Buffalo or Rochester philharmonic orchestra to town for a holiday concert.
In his younger years in Coudersport, he was a baseball
coach, Chamber of Commerce president and active in the Rotary Club. Later, he
served on the board of St. Bonaventure University, which named a theater in its
Quick Center for the Arts for his family. He sent his sons to Ivy League
colleges, with all three returning to Coudersport to work for Adelphia and
encourage its expansion.
He often told people he was just a small town guy who
enjoyed helping people. But Mr. Rigas also lived extravagantly, with the help
of Adelphia funds. Prosecutors said he took cash advances of $1 million a
month.
Mr. Rigas built a 10,000-acre compound outside town, Wending
Creek Farm, for himself and his family and turned it into an agricultural
showcase. A $20 million golf course was being installed on the farm when he was
indicted. He also traveled in a Gulfstream jet that he purchased from King
Hussein of Jordan. And in 1994, he bid $85 million to buy the Pittsburgh
Pirates, but was turned down because the offer involved too much debt.
For all his business success, however, federal prosecutors
carefully built a case against him in the early 2000s at a time when corporate
greed ran rampant through the upper echelon of U.S. business. When he and his
sons were arrested at their Manhattan apartment in 2002, they were paraded in
handcuffs before an early morning phalanx of reporters and photographers –
prompting even President George W. Bush to weigh in.
“This government will investigate, will arrest and will
prosecute corporate executives who break the law, and the Justice Department
took action today,” Bush said of Rigas' arrest. “Today was a day of action and
a day of accomplishment in Washington, D.C.”
Federal prosecutors presented a version of Rigas far from
the benevolent grandfather universally loved by his community. They accused him
and others of concocting a fraud that cost taxpayers $60 billion, while looting
Adelphia of at least $1 billion. They said the Rigases hid Adelphia’s true debt
from investors in order to prop up the stock price, hiding $2.3 billion in
co-signed loans. They also claimed the family used the money for luxuries and
buying Adelphia stock, with the company responsible for repaying the loans.
Though Coudersport rose and then fell with Adelphia’s
fortunes, the town appeared in 2016 to forgive its favorite son's fall from
grace. Though many residents, some of whom lost lifetime savings by investing
in Adelphia, never forgave him, others continued their admiration. Coudersport
citizens launched a petition drive asking the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to release
an ailing Rigas, who had been diagnosed with bladder cancer. Mitch Houghtaling,
a former Adelphia paralegal who helped organize the effort, seemed to sum up
the town’s sentiment for a 2016 story in The News.
“I feel like he’s sown goodness and kindness wherever he’s
been, including where he is now,” she said. “I’d like to see him reap some of
that kindness and mercy now from the justice system.”
When he was released, Coudersport celebrated. Dozens of
residents swarmed the town square in the cold of a February night as he was
driven from prison into his adopted home town. His old friends and employees
held welcoming signs in front of the historic Potter County courthouse and
erupted into thunderous cheers. They swarmed his car shouting “God Bless You,
John” and “Welcome home, Mr. Rigas” and “We love you.”
A frail Rigas seemed overwhelmed by his welcome, waved, blew
kisses and flashed a “V” victory sign.
“I can’t believe all these people came out just for me,” he
said. “God bless you all.”
In the years following his return, he lived quietly on the
family farm, directing the remnants of the family business and working on the
case of his son, Tim, whom prison officials released in 2019. In a 2018
interview with The News, he credited immunotherapy sessions every three weeks –
which he would not have received in prison – for prolonging his life. And luck,
too.
“I’m blessed,” he said. “I really am.”
His wife of 61 years, the former Doris Nielsen, died in
2014.
Survivors include two other sons, Michael and James; one
daughter, Ellen; and six grandchildren.
A spokesman for Fickinger Funeral Home in Coudersport said a
private funeral service is planned.
