Would you hire this crook?
Disgraced former Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski was granted parole Tuesday morning after eight years behind bars for a $134 million corporate fraud — on the condition the ex-CEO gets himself a job, authorities said.
Kozlowski, 67, the poster boy for corporate greed, was convicted in 2005 of the massive scam he used to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included a $2 million toga party for his ex-waitress wife on Sardinia, a $15,000 on a poodle-shaped umbrella stand for his Fifth Avenue apartment and a $6,000 shower curtain.
The luxury-loving crook is slated to be released Jan. 17, though he’s already been in the state’s work-release program for several months and reporting back to a minimum-security facility in Harlem twice a week.
The parole board’s decision requires the spend-a-holic to get a job — thought it’s unclear who would hire the money-skimming convicted CEO.
“I will seek, obtain and maintain employment,” the board’s required Kozlowski to pledge — along with prohibitions on drinking booze and doing drugs.
The parole board also made it clear they don’t want Kozlowski getting back to his old tricks, specifically barring him from acting in any “fiduciary capacity,” having a bank account, or opening a credit card without the permission of his parole board.
Kozlowski showed so much gall at the helm of Tyco he kept two ex-mistresses on his payroll, even charged the company for a “yacht stylist” for his $130 million sloop, and kept tidy with the help of an $80,000-a-year housemaid.
Before his conviction the ruddy robber baron enjoyed a Colorado ranch, a Boca Raton mansion and a Nantucket beach home — multimillion-dollar residences financed through larcenous bonuses, shady employee loans and fraudulently inflated stock-sale windfalls.
Kozlowski and his co-defendant, CFO Mark Swartz, together paid $134 million in restitution to Tyco International Ltd. and $105 million in fines to the state after their 2005 convictions, their attorneys said. They were sentenced to 8 ¹/₃ to 25 years in prison for grand larceny, conspiracy, falsifying records and violating business law after being found guilty of giving themselves illegal bonuses and forgiving loans to themselves from 1999 to 2002.
“Mr. Kozlowski is grateful to the parole board for its decision to grant him parole,” attorney Alan Lewis said.
At Kozlowski’s last parole hearing in April 2012, Kozlowski said prosecutors unofficially offered him a plea bargain for two to six years in prison, but he’d turned it down.
“Back when I was running Tyco, I was living in a CEO-type bubble. I had a strong sense of entitlement at that time,” Kozlowski told the board, who denied his release then.
He said he had a sense of greed and “stole a lot of money, and I did it the way you described through bonuses. I’m very sorry I did that.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Kozlowski, declined to comment on his release.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Post Wires