On April 12, 2008, a funeral was held at the Westwood Hills Christian Church, which is across the street from U.C.L.A., for a man named Robert Warnes Leach. Leach was a screenwriter and teacher who was best known for his scripts for the television series Perry Mason. But the obituaries also prominently mentioned the fact that Leach’s stepson was Henry Nicholas, the 49-year-old co-founder of a staggeringly successful semiconductor company called Broadcom. Nicholas is one of the world’s wealthiest men—this year, Forbes put his net worth at $1.8 billion.

At a dinner held that evening at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, Nicholas, who helped plan the event, gave a poignant speech and showed the assembled crowd his favorite episode of Perry Mason. Leach and Nicholas’s mother, Marcella, were married when Nicholas was a young boy, and although Leach had been ill for several years and died at 93, Nicholas, say friends, was distraught about the death of the man he called his father.

A few days later, Nicholas’s personal lawyer, Bill Hake, announced that Nicholas—who had a reputation as a hard-core partyer—was checking himself into the Betty Ford Center for a month of alcohol rehabilitation. “A recent blood work-up showed a liver panel well out of the normal range,” said Hake. He added, “Nick is seeing the value of life, weighed against the death of his father.”

But Nicholas, whose full name is Dr. Henry Thompson Nicholas III (he has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering), also saw something else coming. For at least the past year, he had worried that federal prosecutors were investigating him, and indeed they were. Less than two months after the funeral, on June 5, the Justice Department unsealed not one but two federal indictments. Nicholas was charged with securities fraud for his role in an alleged scheme in which Broadcom deceived its shareholders about how much it was paying employees by lying about the timing of stock-option grants. According to the government, the company’s former chief financial officer, Bill Ruehle, who was also indicted, had referred to the scheme as the “golden goose,” and, indeed, for years this practice served to wildly inflate the profits Broadcom reported to the public.

It’s the other set of charges, though, that makes Nicholas’s story into something more—quite a bit more—than another entry in the annals of white-collar crime. In an indictment for drug trafficking, the government paints a picture of a drug fiend who hired prostitutes for himself and his customers, used cocaine, methamphetamines, Ecstasy, prescription painkillers, and more—and spiked the drinks of other technology executives without their knowledge. Nicholas pleaded not guilty, and in 2009 a jury will most likely decide his fate on all the charges. But since 2000, more than a dozen people—two of whom were paid off by Broadcom and agreed to keep their allegations secret, according to prosecutors—have filed lawsuits, draft complaints, or supporting declarations that make the government’s allegations seem like the PG-rated version of affairs. Among them: that Nicholas built a sprawling den of iniquity under his multi-million-dollar Laguna Hills mansion. “He wanted to live above ground with his wife and three children, with the option to go below ground to immerse himself in his cocaine, ecstasy, Viagra, speed, prostitutes, and party friends,” alleged the contractors who helped build what they called “the Lair.”

On June 5 in Santa Ana federal court, prosecutors argued that Nicholas, who is six feet six inches, should be denied bail due to his propensity for witness intimidation (he has said he “could have people killed,” according to prosecutor Ken Julian), the ease with which he could flee (Nicholas owns an Italian-made Agusta helicopter as well as a Gulfstream IV and a Cessna Citation), and the potential threat posed by what the judge referred to as his personal army. (Nicholas’s personal security manual requires that three armed guards—who are often former law-enforcement or military men—patrol his home.) Instead, the judge released him on $3.4 million bail and allowed him to return to a $63,000-per-month program at a luxury rehabilitation center called Cliffside Malibu. Now Nicholas, who in the past couldn’t be silenced (he once proudly announced, “I am a media-relations nightmare!,” and he was), has been shut down by his lawyers. He would not comment for this story.