John Rigas (founder and CEO of Adelphia Communications Corporation) was an extraordinary
man. Throughout his professional career, he was honored for his entrepreneurial achievements
and his humanitarian service. Among other awards, he received three honorable doctorate
degrees from distinguished universities, was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute (his college alma mater) and was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of
Fame by Broadcasting and Cable magazine. He worked hard to acquire wealth and status. But a
$2.3 billion financial fraud eventually cost Rigas everything.

Rigas and his company, Adelphia Communications, started out small. With $72,000 of borrowed
money, he began his business career in 1950 by purchasing a movie theater in Coudersport,
Pennsylvania. Two years later, he overdrew his bank account to buy the town cable franchise
with $300 of his own money. Through risky debt-financing, Rigas continued to acquire assets
until, in 1972, he and his brother created Adelphia Communications Corporation. The company
grew quickly, eventually becoming the sixth largest cable company in the world with over 5.6
million subscribers.

From its inception, Adelphia had always been a family business, owned and operated by the
Rigas clan. During the 1990s, the company was run by John Rigas, his three sons, and his son-in-
law. Altogether, members of the Rigas family occupied a majority five of the nine seats on
Adelphia’s board of directors and held the following positions:
John Rigas, CEO and chairman of the board (father); Tim Rigas, CFO and board member (son);
Michael Rigas, executive vice president and board member (son); James Rigas, executive vice
president and board member (son); Peter Venetis, board member (son-in-law).
This family dominance in the company was maintained through stock voting manipulation. The
company issued two types of stock: Class A stock, which held one vote each, and Class B stock,
which held 10 votes each. When shares of stock were issued, however, the Rigas family kept all
Class B shares to themselves, giving them a majority ruling when company voting occurred.
With a majority presence on the board of directors and an effectual influence among voting
shareholders, the Rigas family was able to control virtually every financial decision made by the
company. However, exclusive power led to corruption and fraud. The family established a cash
management system, an enormous account of commingled revenues from Adelphia, other Rigas
entities, and loan proceeds. Although funds from this account were used throughout all the
separate entities, none of their financial statements were ever consolidated.

The family members began to dip into the cash management account, using these funds to
finance their extravagant lifestyle and to hide their crimes. The company paid $4 million to buy
personal shares of Adelphia stock for the family. It paid for Tim Rigas’s $700,000 membership at
the Golf Club at Briar’s Creek in South Carolina. With company funds, the family bought three
private jets, maintained several vacation homes (in Cancun, Beaver Creek, Hilton Head, and
Manhattan), and began construction of a private world-class golf course. In addition, Adelphia
financed, with $3 million, the production of Ellen Rigas’s (John Rigas’s daughter) movie Song
Catcher. John Rigas was honored for his large charitable contributions. But these contributions
also likely came from company proceeds.

In the end, the family had racked up approximately $2.3 billion in fraudulent off-balance-sheet
loans. The company manipulated its financial statements to conceal the amount of debt it was
accumulating. False transactions and phony companies were created to inflate Adelphia’s
earnings and to hide its debt. When the family fraud was eventually caught, it resulted in an SEC
investigation, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, and multiple indictments and heavy sentences. The
perpetrators (namely, John Rigas and his sons) were charged with the following counts:

Violation of the RICO Act

Breach of fiduciary duties

Waste of corporate assets

Abuse of control

Breach of contract

Unjust enrichment

Fraudulent conveyance

Conversion of corporate assets

Until he was convicted of serious fraud, everybody loved John Rigas. He was trusted and respected in the small town of Coudersport and famous for his charitable contributions and abilityto make friends. He had become a role model for others to follow. With a movie theater and a $300 cable tower, he had built one of the biggest empires in the history of cable television. From small beginnings, he became a multimillion-dollar family man who stressed good American values. But his goodness only masked the real John Rigas, and in the end, it was his greed and deceit that ultimately cost him and his family everything.

Find a Formula for the degree 2 Taylor polynomial T₂(x,y) at (a,b)=(pi/2,0). Do not simplify your formula. Use a 3d graphing tool to verify T2(x,y) does a good job of approximating f(x,y) near (a,b)

What did Keynes mean when he said “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”? Explain how that process led to failures or near failures of such companies as Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Bear Stearns and others.

Use matlab to plot Taylor approximation for f(x) for x near 0 Given f(x) = exp(x)

Use subpots to plot and its absolute and realative erros for N= 1,2,3

PLease give matlab code for Taylor and explain in detail, Thank you

A cylindrical bucket sitting on the edge of a table has a 2.95 mm diameter hole near the bottom. Water squirts out the hole as shown in the figure below. If the height of the table is H = 2.00 m, determine the height h of the water level in the bucket.

The answer is not 15.23 cm

What did Keynes mean when he said “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”? Explain how that process led to failures or near failures of such companies as Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Bear Stearns and others.

The absolute zero temperature is equal to 0 k or -273.15. Why we cannot create objects with even lower temperature than 0k? Why the absolute zero temperature exists? What happens ( on microscopic scale) to atoms and molecules when their temperature is near the absolute zero?

8. Explain the muscles involving eye movements and nerves that innervate them. Explain how you determine eye function (movement) as a health care practitioner when you assess your patients.

What does near sighted and far sighted mean and the physiology of this condition.

When Terry’s father hides his favorite toy under a blanket, he acts as though it no longer exists, and he makes no attempt to retrieve it. Terry is clearly near the beginning of Piaget's ________ stage.

a. concrete operational

b. sensorimotor

c. preoperational

d. formal operational

Given the following information:

Other information:

• The manufacturer uses FIFO.
• All Variable costs are direct costs

Required:

1. Prepare an income statement for the Current Year based on Variable Costing.

2. Prepare an income statement for the Current Year based on Absorption Costing.

3. Reconcile the difference in Net Income between Variable Costing and Absorption Costing for the current year.

4. Near the very end of the fiscal year, the production manager noted that if Net Income increases by $200 they will get a big bonus. How can the production manager increase Net income using Absorption costing even though no additional units will be produced?