Broadcom billionaire admits guilt

"There was not a dry eye in the room," said Mike Lefkowitz, a longtime friend of Samueli and Samueli's wife, Susan, and former head of their charity foundation. "His parents, as my parents, were Holocaust survivors. When you come through something like that you want to be generous, you want to give back, you want to be thankful for having survived."

James Doti, Chapman University's president, recently recalled Samueli's remarks at the library's dedication.

"After we acknowledged him and Susan for the gift, he pointed to me in his remarks and said, 'I know your mother passed away. For you to be here means a great deal to me.' He personalized it. He knew what I was feeling at the time," Doti said.

Allen Krause, rabbi of Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo, which Samueli occasionally attends, said Samueli and his wife had "lifted the level of philanthropy in this county geometrically."

"In the Jewish community, they created a golden age of philanthropy here, because they pushed the bar higher than it had ever been before," he said.

Columbia University's Coffee noted that it was common for white-collar defendants to be charged not for what they originally did but for their actions afterward. That happened with Samueli.

"Most of these high-powered people who rise to that level of stature have perfected their ability to talk their way out of problems," Coffee said. "That's a fatal mistake when you're dealing with the government. You've got to shut up."

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scott.reckard@latimes.com

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christopher.goffard@latimes.com

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Times staff writers David Reyes, Eric Stephens and Helene Elliott contributed to this report.--

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Henry Samueli

Age: 53 (born Sept. 20, 1954, Buffalo, N.Y.)

Family: Wife Susan and three daughters

Education: Fairfax High School in Los Angeles; bachelor's, master's degrees and PhD in electrical engineering from UCLA.

1980-85: Worked as engineer at TRW Inc. and taught classes at UCLA part time as a visiting lecturer

1985-95: Full-time professorship at UCLA

1991: Co-founds Broadcom with Henry T. Nicholas III, his former engineering student at UCLA

1995: Takes leave from UCLA, moves to Orange County

1998: Broadcom goes public.

January 2003: Nicholas steps down as CEO.

2005: Purchases the Anaheim Ducks National Hockey League team

2007: Federal authorities force Broadcom to fix its books by recording $2.2 billion in unreported expenses related to options backdating.

May 14, 2008: The Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Samueli and Nicholas of backdating employee stock options from 1998 to 2008. Samueli steps down as chairman of Broadcom.

June 23, 2008: Samueli pleads guilty to lying to federal regulators.

Source: Times research