The political leanings of Broadcom's former CEO, Henry Nicholas III, make for some post-election headscratching. Proposition 6 was one of the two state ballot measures he had underwritten and supported — to the price tag of $6 million — to increase penalties for gang and drug crimes, even satellite tracking of sex offenders. Nicholas is the same guy who is under federal indictment for felony drug use and conspiracy, building out sex dungeons for liaisons with prostitutes, and securities fraud. Good thing voters didn't pass it.

If you like watching pie fights, this is equally entertaining: Broadcom is suing Qualcomm over its patent practices. Both companies sell wireless chips, but Qualcomm also makes money by licensing its patents to the same customers who buy its chips. Broadcom, in essense, is accusing Qualcomm of double-charging customers — mostly cell-phone makers. What's not clear: Why Broadcom, rather than Qualcomm's customers, is filing the complaint. [WSJ]

Advanced Micro Devices hasn't been able to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars it needs to spin off its chip-manufacturing business and focus on processor design. This news comes after AMD sold its digital-TV arm to Broadcom for $193 million in August. The spinoff was supposed to help AMD cut billions of dollars in red ink by taking the expensive plants off its balance sheet. [NYT]

Chipmaker AMD's cash reserves dropped 17 percent during the first half of 2008. To boost that investor-worrying number, AMD has agreed to sell its digital-TV business to Broadcom for $193 million. 530 AMD employees will join Broadcom as a result. A job perk: Hearing about the fun times Broadcom veterans enjoyed when ex-CEO Henry Nicholas ran the shop.

Nevermind the multiple witnesses to Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas' drug and prostitute habit. Nevermind the $2 billion restatement of earnings by Broadcom over backdated stock options. Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, still worth $2 billion himself while staying at a $60,000 plus substance abuse treatment clinic in Malibu under bond has plead not guilty to the charges listed in various federal indictments. A jury trial will commence on July 29th, with Nicholas joining co-founder Henry Samueli, former CFO William Ruehle and general counsel David Dull as defendants possibly taking the stand to describe their logical actions as sober and conscientious executives just doing their fiduciary duty to shareholders. I hate to try people outside the judicial system, but seriously, does anyone see any consequence beyond the lightest "club fed" sentence for these guys if found guilty?

Henry Nicholas, the cofounder and former CEO of telecom chipmaker Broadcom, gave $2.5 million to a crime-victims charity, and $3.5 million to defeat a 2004 bill that would have weakened California's "three strikes" law that doles out life sentences to multiple felony offenders, motivated by the death of his younger sister Marsalee Nicholas at the hands of evil drug dealers. This was after the alleged drink-spiking, border-crossing, threats-making, and hush-money paying episodes in his life federal prosecutors detailed in the charges on which Nicholas is due to be arraigned tomorrow. Now that the story has hit the New York Post the clock is ticking on an hour-long teleplay for one of the Law and Order franchises. The nominations from our casting call have been made and seconded, so take our poll and decide if Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen or Nicholas Cage should attach themselves to the project.

A video that was posted to YouTube last summer portrayed a tall man ingesting a powdered substance nasally — and the subject was confirmed to be Broadcom cofounder and former CEO Henry Nicholas. That's according to Nicholas's attorney Susan Szabo. In order to get the clip taken off the popular video sharing site, Szabo confirmed that the man featured was her client and that the moment was filmed in his home and without his consent. The email exchange was submitted to the court by prosecuting attorneys [PDF] in order to bolster their case that Nicholas is a flight risk and a danger to himself and others, and therefore should not be granted freedom while awaiting trial. They also included an account of Nicholas crashing his Lamborghini last November, and then having his security guard take the rap. The judge eventually ruled the defendant be held under "home detention." After the jump, the email exchange between Szabo and YouTube.

It wasn't a coincidence that I mentioned Robert Evans in a post about everyone's favorite drug-addled, sex-obsessed and federally indicted entrepreneur Henry Nicholas of Broadcom. With Josh Hartnett starring in what looks like a schlocky ode to dot-com excess in August, the details of Nicholas' indictment reading more like the outline of Blow, and locations ripped from The OC and Laguna Beach, it's perfect fodder for a Hollywood screenplay. In fact, Evans protegé Brett Ratner could produce, with Michael Mann directing and Paul Haggis as the ghostwriter for the script Nicholas would be daft not to pen while locked up at Betty Ford. But any good package needs an "opener" as they say in the biz — a big name star for the marquee to draw crowds. So I ask you, dear readers, who would you cast as Nicholas?

Broadcom bad boy Henry Nicholas wasn't just a surprisingly inept industrial consumer of drugs and prostitutes with a handful of posh properties scattered across the OC — he was also a Bush donor. According to campaign finance disclosure documents, he gave $1,000 in 1999 to the George W. Bush campaign during the primary season in 1999. Or, at the $20 per dose he was paying for MDMA, the equivalent of fifty tabs. Maybe that's what Nicholas meant by "party favors?"

Nothing former Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas did is particularly remarkable to anyone who's enjoyed Brett Morgen's The Kid Stays in the Picture biopic about the life and times of Robert Evans. What's remarkable is that it was a technology CEO in Orange County and not someone in the abnormally amoral entertainment industry. As cynical and jaded as we may be about the foibles of the ultrarich of the Valley, even we were surprised by some of the stunts detailed in the allegations, if only for their naïveté.

How can everyone have missed the most lurid aspect of the fall of former Broadcom CEO Henry Nicholas? Amidst all the sex and drug charges, we've missed the one subject that really gets people's tongues wagging: real estate. Thanks to laws passed in America's "war on drugs," any property involved in the transportation, storage and sale of illegal narcotics is subject to seizure. Thanks to the magic of Google Maps and Street View, we can also get a glimpse into the somewhat banal landscape of Nicholas's party circuit under the oppressively constant sunshine of Southern California's Orange County and Nevada. Let's start at Broadcom headquarters.

27324 Camino Capistrano, Laguna Niguel, CA

Rodeo Circle, Laguna Hills, CA

5300 California Avenue, Irvine, CA

9 Telescope, Newport Coast, CA

One Turnberry Place, 2877 Paradise Road, Suite 3201, Las Vegas, NV

In what may become a seminal document in the history of the dot-com era for its detailed account of excess, the recently unsealed indictment on drug charges of Broadcom founder and former CEO Henry Nicholas describes everything from spiking the drinks of fellow executives to five-figure wire transfers for "party favors" such as cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA. The broad strokes of Nicholas' drug and prostitute habit, and the lavish grottoes he built to play with both in, have been public for a while. But the blow-by-blow account is fascinating. And these are just the drug and sex charges. Nicholas and other execs at the Southern California chip maker are also under fire from the Securities and Exchange Comission for their role in an fraudulently backdating stock options to enrich themselves and their associates. According to reports, Nicholas is currently at the posh Betty Ford Clinic.

After the SEC accused Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, founders of chipmaker Broadcom, of illegally backdating stock options for five years, Samueli stepped down as board chairman and CTO. Nicholas had stepped down from his post as CEO in 2003 amidst allegations of having a drug habit and flying friends and prostitutes from around the country to an underground party lair he'd built in his home.

A federal judge has sanctioned six Qualcomm attorneys for failing to produce tens of thousands of documents in the chip manufacturer's high-profile patent-infringement lawsuit with Broadcom. The six attorneys will also face further scrutiny for ethics violations from the California Bar Association. Thirteen other attorneys were absolved of their part in the deception. As is always the case, the cover-up is worse than the crime. Qualcomm had already been ordered to pay Broadcom $8.5 million for the patent infringement. Now its lawyers are paying with their reputations. (Photo by Dideo)

A lawsuit charges that Henry T. Nicholas III, the billionaire founder of chipmaker Broadcom, had "plans for a 'secret and convenient lair' with hidden entries for Nicholas to indulge his 'manic obsession with prostitutes' and 'addiction to cocaine and Ecstasy.'" And they say geeks don't know how to party. [LA Times]