R.I.P.: John Rigas, Once-Jailed CableTV Pioneer

John Rigas

John Rigas, the cable television pioneer who devoted half a century to building Adelphia Communications Corp. into the nation’s sixth-largest operator, only to be convicted of looting the company and driving it into bankruptcy, has died. He was 96.

Bloomber reports his death was confirmed by William Brennan Jr., a funeral director at the Thomas E. Fickinger Funeral Home in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, where Rigas lived.

A federal jury in 2004 convicted Rigas and his son, Timothy, of bank and securities fraud, finding they had lied about the source of $1.6 billion used to buy Adelphia stock and debt and had stolen $51 million in cash advances. John Rigas was sentenced to 12 years in prison; his son, the company’s former chief financial officer, was sentenced to 17 years. They began serving their terms in 2007.

The U.S. Supreme Court twice rejected their appeals, most recently in October 2010. At the time, both father and son were at the low-security Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina. John Rigas was granted a compassionate release from prison in Waymart, Pennsylvania, in February 2016, due to his failing health. His son was released in 2019.

The criminal charges stunned those who knew the chatty and self-effacing Rigas, who adhered so much to small-town values that he removed racy adult programming from the big-city cable systems he acquired.

Rigas had kept his corporate headquarters in Coudersport, with a population of about 2,600, where he began his cable TV company in 1952.  They signed their first cable customer in 1953.