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Former Tyco CEO Kozlowski Says ‘I Was Piggy’ in NYT Tell-all

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Tyco’s former-CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, was sentenced to eight and half years in prison.

The former CEO of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski, after serving six and a half years in prison for draining over $100 million in company funds, acknowledge while speaking with The New York Times that “I was piggy.”

The NYT reported that last week state parole officials informed the ex-mogul that he would be completely free for the first time in close to a decade. In the interviews with the Times, the 68-year-old spoke about his experience behind bars, the three years in a Manhattan work-release program as well as his plans for the future. Kozlowski said, “I’ve waited for freedom for a long time.”

Though the once high roller is finally out on his own, his status of living is far from the laps of luxury he had been accustom to prior to his arrest many years ago. Sitting in his humble two-bedroom apartment Kozlowski described to the paper his life with Kimberly, his third wife that wed last year, who dons a less than extravagant cubic zirconium ring worth only a couple of hundred dollars. About his wife, Kozlowski said, “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me – ever.”

The now ordinary Kozlowski has come to appreciate and find joy in the simpler things in life in his days post-incarceration. His joys are now mainly his grandchildren, as well as the little things, like an avocado.

The New York Post sums up the ex-tycoon’s pre-prison life:

In his previous incarnation, Kozlowski enjoyed the good life – replete with a Fifth Avenue home sporting a $6,000 gold-and-burgundy shower curtain – for which he landed on The Post’s cover with the headline: “OINK, OINK.”

The poster child for corporate greed was convicted in 2005 of stealing $134 million from Tyco to fuel a lavish lifestyle that included a $2 million toga party birthday bash for his ex-wife on the Italian island of Sardinia in 2001.

At one preposterous party he hosted, an ice sculpture of a chubby boy that peed vodka. He even spent $15,000 on a poodle umbrella stand.

At Mid-State Correctional Facility, Kozlowski told the Times that he was well-liked by other inmates. Fellow prisoners would ask him from financial advice, and dubbed him with the nickname “Koz.”

He said he now works in a quaint Midtown office, doing “low-level consulting” on mergers and acquisitions, as well as helps ex-cons by serving on the board of the Fortune Society.

In memory of his 130-foot yacht, The Endeavor, which he sold for $13.1 million to pay restitutions, ordered by the courts in 2006, he keeps a model of the boat built to compete in American’s Cup in 1934.

Though he admits to making mistakes, Kozlowski asserted to The Times that his conviction was unfair, compared to how few of the Wall Street con men have been pursued by the law in recent years.

The former-bigwig, now ex-con said, “After 2008, nobody was prosecuted.”

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