Delicious Dotcom Decadence
A Rake's Progress III: 'The Orgy' by William Hogarth
Who says engineers are boring? When Henry Nicholas, founder of Broadcom, rode the dotcom wave all the way to the bank, he actually gave Hugh Hefner a run for his money.
An excerpt from the article in The Independent:
The 6ft 6ins engineer founded the company Broadcom in 1991, making
the innards of cable TV boxes at his Redondo Beach apartment. When it floated in the go-go years of the internet boom, his shares went up in value 40 times and he soon acquired the trappings of the super rich: private jets, a Lamborghini and a mansion in Laguna Hills with its own equestrian estate and, court documents claim, his personal brothel, hidden in an underground grotto.
The grotto was reached by hidden doors with secret levers, leading
to tunnels and a 2,000sq-ft underground sports bar called "Nick's
Café". According to claims in court papers, this was a "secret and
convenient lair", to cater for "Mr Nicholas's manic obsession with
prostitutes" and his "addiction to cocaine and ecstasy".
He used his private jet to pick up prostitutes as far away as New
Orleans, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles "and bring them back to the Pond for his rock star friends", according to documents filed with
Orange County Superior Court. "He provided his guests with
transportation and cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamines, marijuana,
mushrooms, and nitrous oxide [laughing gas]".
