Steven Bren (Irvine Co. Chairman Donald's Son) Takes Top Spot on State Tax Delinquent Listicle

I don't know if the listicle craze is still a thing–I'm not much of a reader–but just in case it is let us note that the son of a Newport Beach billionaire (and most mega of Orange County mega-developers) finds himself atop a new list. Not that Irvine Co. chairman Don Bren's son Steven, whose company earlier this year took the No. 6 spot on the California Franchise Tax Board's list of corporate tax delinquents, wants to be anywhere near the FTB's latest grouping.

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Steven Bren, Irvine Co. Chairman's Son, Leads Firm on State's Delinquent Corporate Tax List

The Laguna Beach resident has been slapped with a lien of $4,567,003.27, which is the same amount he owes in personal taxes, making him the most delinquent of California's top tax delinquents, according to the FTB. It's not unfamiliar territory for the art collector, Bacchus Development CEO and former Grand Prix race car driver, who along with his wife occupied the No. 18 spot on the state's personal tax delinquent list in April 2010, when they were a mere $2,209,561.23 in arrears.

Things are tough all over–among Orange County's wealthy (or seemingly so). Here are the spots on the list, folks, cities of residence and amounts owed by others you may work for, according to the FTB (Fun facts are NOT courtesy of the FTB):

No. 10. Roland C. Colton, Esq., Laguna Niguel, $1,520,344.96

14. Connie S. and Jordan Carmichael, Laguna Niguel, $1,398,127.64

18. Erlend Olson, Newport Beach, $1,143,690.29 (Fun fact: An Erlend Olson and his Newport Beach “secretive startup” Terralliance Technologies are subjects of a 2010 Fortune magazine article titled as we reported last year.)

226. Mike C. Krumbein, Santa Ana, $216,055.88

238. John H. Kang, Coto De Caza, $212,198.50 (Fun fact: This returning contestant to the FTB personal tax delinquency list was convicted by a jury in federal court in South Carolina in 2010 of fraud and money laundering as president of WebMD's Medical Manager unit in Tampa, Florida. Before Kang was convicted–but after helping to inflate the software company's revenues by more than $16.8-million between 1997 and 2001–he left to found LiquidMetal Technologies, which is based in Humble, Texas, but has a research and development office in Lake Forest. “Liquidmetal is a revolutionary material technology discovered in conjunction with NASA,” the company boasts.)

240. William G. Mckee, Yorba Linda, $210,955.08

246. Tiffany P. Asakawa, Huntington Beach, $207,632.97 (Fun fact: There is a Tiffany Asakawa in Huntington Beach who used to work for Merrill Lynch. There is also a Tiffany P. Asakawa who is or was a financial adviser in Costa Mesa. On Sept. 11, a Tiffany Danielle Peacock-Asakawa, a former general securities representative with both Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. and Merrill Lynch, was suspended from trading for 10 months and subjected to a $15,000 fine after consenting to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority findings that she had executed trades for customers without being licensed, lied on her firms' compliance questionnaires, and had engaged in discretionary trading in customer accounts without their approval or approval from Merrill Lynch.)

279. Francisco A. Pulido, Anaheim, $193,432.28

284. Mark E. Kern, Aliso Viejo, $186,334.69 (Fun fact: The video game designer best known for being team lead on the video game World of Warcraft went on to found Red 5 Studios in Aliso Viejo in 2006. He was ousted by the board of directors this past December and joined MEK Entertainment, which is now Retro Ronin that in May announced its first video game would be Voxelnauts, a virtual-reality sandbox MMO inspired by the novel Ready Player One. At the same time, the company announced that Kern had left “to pursue his own agenda.”)

Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!

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