Broadcom's Samueli on thin ice

Jail???? Are you kidding me!!! This is guy has done more positive actions for his Country & Community than 99.9% of Americans!!!!...

I''m not saying that what he did is OK. I am just afraid that people reading the headlines who don''t know anything about the case will think that Samueli is a sleazy embezzler who should be strung up. I worked with Samueli before his Broadcom days and he was one of the nicest people I have ever worked with. He was still a professor at UCLA and he took time out to help me with technical problems. I can imagine that the stock dating thing at Broadcom may not have seemed so black and white at the time, it probably got murky and Samueli got caught up in it. Though as mikeStabie says, I don''t know how Samueli could not have known at least some of what Nicholas was up to. I guess I am just very sad to see such a good guy get into such a bad situation. I just hope that you will show some compassion and realize that you are not perfect and you might have made the same mistakes he did. Having known the man, I think he is sincere when he says he has learned his lesson.

JimOM, We understand what he did, he lied under oath...doesn't matter what he lied about (legally).

Jim, please read the judge's ruling. Samueli did more than you think. And I'm sorry, but just because everyone else was doing it is no excuse. The shareholders were ripped off 2.2B dollars. The effect of the theft is delayed, so the exec's do make money by selling shares before the effect of the additional expense of the options is accounted for. Also, Samueli worked with Nick since aroun 1982. Do you really think he did not know the character of the man he was co-chairman with?

I don't think Rita and the others here understand what he actually did. They think this is another Enron. All Broadcom did is change the dates on stock options to regular employees. This did not benefit Samueli directly. It was just to try to retain employees. And these were rank and file employees, not the guys at the top. Broadcom was giving stock options to everyone they hired. These employees knew when they were hired, so they knew that the dates were being changed, it seems like they should take some blame for accepting them, but they were greedy. All startups in the 90's and 00's were doing this, some didn't think it was illegal. The stock option is just like a bonus to the employee. Of course, if you change the date then it messes up the accounting and can dilute the stock price. But everyone was making money off of Broadcom stock at the time, so nobody cared. Broadcom has now paid billions to make up for it. So I think that trying to make an example of Samueli is totally unfair. He is a college professor who got mixed up in this mess, and he has learned his lesson. He did not defraud anyone and did not make any money off of the backdating. The backdating was for regular employees who hired in after the stock had leveled off, so their stock options wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't move the date.

1. The judge's opinion was based on the assumption that the plea agreement should be rejected "IF Samueli's conduct was comparable to that of the others who have been indicted..." But Samueli was cleared by an independent auditing firm of such comparable conduct... His conduct, apparently was NOT comparable. 2. The prescribed fine for making a false statement to the SEC is $250,000. $12Million is about 50 times the size of the fine. 3. $2.2B was not "realized from backdating options." $2.2B was the amount of the write-down for prior years due to the resulting restatement of income. 4. Samueli's looks like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that's about it.

The $12M offer is laughable when considered against the $2.2B allegedly realized from backdating options.

I''d suggest reading the entire decision the judge made. (Its around somewhere, its about 22 pages legal type) The judge makes a very compelling case for rejecting the deal. Even the presentencing report from the probationary office recommended a 12 month sentence. As Rita said, the judge got it exactly right. Samueli was buying his freedom. Hopefully a jury will see this for what it is and force some prison time.

The judge got it right. The magnitude of the offense and the obstruction deserves some jail time, probation and community service. If it were as lesser amount of money for a "regular joe", he would already be in jail. I'm sure they have plenty of evidence without his cooperation to get the other guys, too.