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- BUSINESS, Page 45A Raider's Days Of ReckoningNearly everybody wants a crack at Paul Bilzerian
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- Just when corporate raider Paul Bilzerian seems to have hit
- rock bottom, his fall from grace goes even farther. Last month
- Bilzerian, 39, was convicted by a Manhattan jury on nine counts of
- securities fraud, which carry a potential 45-year prison sentence
- and $2.25 million in fines. Then last week the Securities and
- Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit accusing him of illegal
- stock transactions involving seven companies, including his 1988
- takeover of Singer. The charges range from lying to the SEC about
- how he financed his raids to trying to hide the number of shares
- he owned. In its suit, the SEC asks for repayment of more than $31
- million in allegedly illegal profits. While denying the new
- charges, Bilzerian last week resigned as chairman of Singer, a post
- he had held for just 18 months.
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- The SEC accuses four of Bilzerian's associates of helping him
- conceal his financial dealings. Three of them, including
- shopping-mall magnate Edward DeBartolo Sr. of Youngstown, Ohio,
- have already settled without admitting guilt.
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- Bilzerian is leaving Singer, a defense contractor that
- manufactures weapons-control systems, in poor financial shape. To
- pay off more than $1 billion he borrowed to acquire the company,
- Bilzerian sold eight of the company's twelve divisions. A group of
- 9,000 retirees has filed a $235 million lawsuit against the
- company, accusing Bilzerian of plundering Singer's pension plan.
- The U.S. Government is suing the company for defense-contract
- fraud, seeking $231 million in damages.
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- None of that has slowed construction on Bilzerian's new
- eleven-bedroom, 21-bath house in an exclusive suburb north of
- Tampa. Expected to cost as much as $10 million, the 36,866-sq.-ft.
- home will include a basketball court complete with bleachers and
- electronic scoreboards.