Paul Bilzerian is an Armenian-American businessman, corporate takeover expert, and convicted felon.
Wiki/Biography
Paul Alec Bilzerian was born in 1950 (now 70; 2020) in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended school in Worcester, Massachusetts. One day in September 1968, he was called into the principal’s office for wearing blue jeans, which violated the school’s dress code. This angered him, and he responded by dropping out of school. He then joined the United States Army, where he passed the high school equivalency exam to enter the officer school and was promoted to lieutenant. After leaving the military, he entered Stanford University and graduated with honors in political science in 1975. That same year, he entered Harvard Business School, but was unsure about his choice of attending the school because he had previously rejected other law school offers in favor of attending Harvard Business School.
appearance
Height (approximate): 5′ 8″
Eye Color: Green
Hair color: gray and white
Family and Race
He is an Armenian-American whose ancestors survived the Armenian Genocide (1914-1923), the mass killings and expulsions of ethnic Armenians from Turkey and neighboring territories by the Ottoman government during World War I, and immigrated to the United States in the 20th century.
Parents and siblings
His father, Oscar A. Bilzerian, was a civil servant, and his mother was Joan Bilzerian (née Barry).
Paul Bilzerian’s father
Paul Bilzerian’s mother
His parents divorced when he was in high school, which caused trouble in his teenage life. He has an older brother named Mark S. Bilzerian and an older sister named Deborah C. Lambert.
Wife and children
After graduation, Bilzerian married Stanford classmate Terri Steffen in 1978. After their marriage, they moved to St. Petersburg, Florida.
Paul Bilzerian and his wife
Bilzerian has two sons, Adam Bilzerian (American-born Nevis poker player and author) and Dan Bilzerian (American actor, businessman, amateur poker player and social media influencer).
Paul Bilzerian and his sons
Profession
After dropping out of high school, he joined the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War (November 1955 – April 1975), earning a medal for his service in Vietnam. After his discharge, he studied at Stanford University. After graduating from Harvard University, he got a job in the finance office of Crown Zellerbach Company, where he evaluated merger opportunities. However, he was more interested in doing deals on his own, and in 1978, Paul and two Vietnam veterans with broadcasting experience invested in a radio station called “WPLP” in Seminole, Florida. He moved from San Francisco to St. Petersburg to take care of finances, while his two colleagues managed the sales and marketing of the business. However, after a dispute over control, Bilzerian left the radio station in the late 1970s to join his father-in-law, Harry Steffen’s real estate business. In 1984, he and his wife moved to Sacramento, California, to live with his father-in-law and his mother-in-law. After leaving the station, his partners claimed in the lawsuit that he only took out half of the $100,000 he had promised, and that after being fired by the board, he used the company’s checkbook to write a check for $50,000 to his father-in-law, Harry Steffen, a former real estate developer who had provided that portion of the funding. After the verbal abuse ended, Paul managed to recover his father-in-law’s investment in an out-of-court settlement and received a promissory note for $300,000 to release all claims to the station’s assets. Soon he began to get involved in his father-in-law’s business, and in 1982 he turned to stocks. In early 1984, he made his first attempt to acquire a small portion of Syntax Corporation, but by the time he told many people about his plan, the stock had sold out and his plan failed before he could buy up the majority of the shares. In 1985, he made two high-profile acquisition attempts, one for New York clothing manufacturer “Cluett Peabody & Company” and the other for Pittsburgh construction company “HH Robertson”. In 1986, he moved back to Florida and, along with other investors William and Earle I. Mack (sons of New Jersey real estate developer H. Bert Mack), launched a takeover bid for Hammermill Paper Company, purchasing approximately 3.3 million shares of Hammermill stock at an average price of approximately $47 per share, then offering $900 million ($52 per share) for the remainder of the company, but the bid was rejected after Hammermill was sold to International Paper for $64.50 per share; Bilzerian and his investor partners still made more than $60 million from the deal. In 1987, Bilzerian began to acquire defense electronics manufacturer Singer Corporation. In October 1987, a group of investors led by Bilzerian purchased $2.1 million worth of Singer stock in the previous two months. By T. Boone Pickens. In January 1988, Pickens provided $150 million in additional financing to help Bilzerian acquire Singer.
Singer Group old logo
After serving time in prison in a stock-parking case in the 1980s, he became president of Utah software company Cimetrix. In 2002, the government seized his ownership of Cimetrix and the company went bankrupt.
Cimetrix logo
In 2020, he was reportedly running Ignite International Ltd., a company founded by Dan Bilzerian (his son). The report said Bilzerian played a not-so-secret role within the company, with thousands of emails sent between him and other Ignite executives.
Ignite logo
Inventory Parking Case
In 1986, the federal government uncovered an insider trading scheme in which a Drexel Burnham Lambert investment banker named Dennis Levine exchanged cash for inside information with stock trader Ivan Boesky, who had testified against Boyd Jefferies, the prominent owner and chairman of Jefferies. Jefferies later testified against three other corporate and investment bankers, including Bilzerian. The SEC then launched an investigation into Bilzerian, alleging that he engaged in fraud in four transactions by hiding ownership of acquisition targets in secret accounts at Jefferies stock brokerage in Los Angeles. According to him,
I am the first person to be sued for 13d disclosure violations after hundreds of previous cases were civil and settled with consent decrees with no fines or penalties. If I felt I was in the right, I would spend $100,000 to defend a $200 lawsuit. “I guess that’s the ultimate definition of litigation.”
Amid growing public controversy, Bilzerian pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of securities and tax violations, conspiracy, and making false statements to the government, and requested a speedy trial to clear his name. After two days of deliberations in June, a jury found Bilzerian guilty of nine counts, including conspiracy, making false statements, and securities violations. In September, he was sentenced to four years in prison and a $1.5 million fine for his testimony. According to him,
Judge Ward told me before the trial that if I lost and didn’t testify, I wouldn’t go to jail, but if I lost and testified, I would pay a price.”
Bilzerian appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against him in a split decision in January 1991, finding that his argument that his trial was unfair was without merit. In December 1991, he began serving his sentence at the now-closed Eglin Federal Penitentiary at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. In December 1992, he was released from prison and served his sentence under house arrest.
Civil Litigation and Bankruptcy
After Bilzerian was convicted, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil lawsuit against Bilzerian on the same charges, forcing him to disgorge profits from the takeover attempt, which he claimed was double jeopardy because he had already paid for his actions. In 1993, a federal judge ruled in favor of the SEC and ordered Bilzerian to disgorge $33.1 million in profits, plus $62 million in interest. In January 1994, Bilzerian appealed the civil judgment to the D.C. Court of Appeals, but was denied. In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the SEC could seek and obtain disgorgement of profits from the court as “equitable relief” for securities law violations. Due to the huge amount of ill-gotten gains that Bilzerian was sentenced to, he had to file for bankruptcy in 1991. In 1999, he attempted to sell his house in the prestigious Avila neighborhood in Tampa, Florida. After the SEC continued to pursue Bilzerian, the judge ordered the appointment of a receiver to take over his assets and arrested him for civil contempt of court. In January 2001, Bilzerian filed for bankruptcy again, declaring his non-exempt assets to be $15,805 and debts to be $140 million, most of which were ill-gotten gains judgments from the government. On June 11, 2001, while Bilzerian was in prison, FBI agents raided his family’s residence with a sealed search warrant and seized computers, documents, and a Beretta firearm. Bilzerian unsuccessfully sued the FBI agents for filing an affidavit containing numerous false statements, but a federal judge dismissed the case. Bilzerian was released from prison in January 2002 under an agreement that his wife, Terri Steffen, would sell the residence and split the proceeds with the SEC, and transfer the majority of his wealth to the SEC.
Awards and Honors
- Vietnam Cross of Valor
characteristic
He owns a 28,000-square-foot castle in Avila, Tampa, with 10 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and six half-bathrooms, indoor basketball and racquetball courts, four fireplaces and a wine room that he sold in 2016 for $2.85 million.
Paul Bilzerian’s Avila Mansion
Facts/Trivia
- He loved sports, and built indoor basketball and racquetball courts at his now-sold Avila, Tampa, mansion for people to play, and he even dreamed of playing major league baseball.
- Paul Bilzerian, a movie buff who wanted to access a video library for his own use and take advantage of the tax benefits of movie depreciation, also visited a video rental store in Sarasota’s South Bay Fashion Center.
- After dropping out of school, he rode a motorcycle, worked as a cashier at a fast food restaurant, and briefly as a truck loader. When he got bored, he joined the Army.
- While at Stanford, he and his wife, Terri Steffen, would often borrow bicycles to do chores around the house. He would ride the bike while Terri balanced on the handlebars to do laundry. But he had a “big, old Cadillac,” according to a classmate.
- From 1978 until his imprisonment in 1991, he owned several properties in St. Petersburg.
- In 1989, during a hearing on his stock-sale suspension, he estimated his worth at more than $50 million. Later that year, in a private lawsuit, he declared his net worth at $81.4 million. At times, he said he had made hundreds of millions of dollars.
- During the 2020 Azerbaijan attack, Paul and his two sons, Adam and Dan Bilzerian, donated $250,000 to the Hayastan All-Armenia Fund, which is currently raising funds to support the Artsakh attack. In an interview, he said:
I am very disappointed that Azerbaijan has decided to attack the Armenian people. This is terrible, young people are dying. The country must defend itself, and people are heading to the border to join the war.”
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education