We've got the George Argyros-owned apartment empire “systematically ripping off” its largely poor or lower middle class tenants by fabricating excuses for not refunding deposits to literally thousands of people.
We've got Donald L. Bren–owner of the Irvine Co. using strong arm tactics on small local businesses and, in a messy child support case in Los Angeles, declaring himself exempt from law because he's so rich.
And, perhaps most colorful of all, we've got Henry T. Nicholas III–a founder of Broadcom–and, if the FBI is right, tied to an underground sex/drug cave in Laguna Niguel (of all places), wild drug parties, corporate cheating and bribery. Nicholas partner Henry Samueli, another billionaire and owner of the Anaheim Ducks, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the alleged fraud schemes, according to the feds.
So the relatively clean** prize goes to William Gross, the Laguna Beach-based portfolio investment guru, yoga practitioner and stamp collector who has controlled hundreds of billions of dollars simultaneously over the years. Congratulations, Bill.
**As much as a Wall Street investment shark who got his start in Las Vegas can be clean.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.