Who was the CEO convicted in the 2002 Tyco corporate scandal involving looted company funds?

Dennis Kozlowski was the CEO convicted in the 2002 Tyco corporate scandal involving looted company funds.

Kozlowski led Tyco International during a period of rapid expansion. Prosecutors accused him and chief financial officer Mark Swartz of taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the company through unauthorized compensation, loans, and luxury spending. The case became one of the best-known corporate scandals of the early 2000s.

A 2004 trial ended with a hung jury, but Kozlowski and Swartz were convicted at a retrial in 2005. Kozlowski received a prison sentence of up to 25 years and was ordered to pay restitution and fines. He was released on parole in 2014.

The scandal is sometimes confused with accounting-fraud cases involving Enron or WorldCom. Tyco’s case centered especially on executive self-dealing and undisclosed benefits, including the widely reported purchase of an expensive birthday party for Kozlowski’s wife using company money.