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Peregrine Systems, the San Diego software firm that melted down after revelations of accounting fraud in 2002, is still making news but not the positive type.
Peregrine, which filed bankruptcy in 2002 and emerged the following year, was sold last year to Hewlett Packard Cos. for $425 million in cash.
Earlier this month, Douglas Stephen Powanda, its former vice president of worldwide sales, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Powanda, 50, and now living in Texas, has a significant link to disgraced former U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham, who pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes in March. Cunningham is now serving an eight-year prison sentence.
After Cunningham, one of the most powerful members of Congress, sold his Del Mar house, he moved up in a big way in December 2003, buying Powanda's former house in Rancho Santa Fe.
The house was described as a mansion, and possessed 7,628 square foot of space, plus many amenities.
Cunningham paid $2.55 million in cash for the estate, presumably most of the funds coming from the sale of his Del Mar house to defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade.
That sale, for $1.7 million in 2003, was well beyond the market price for similar homes in the area.
Eleven months later, Wade sold the Del Mar house for about $700,000 less than he paid for it. The transaction triggered an investigation that brought down Cunningham, a former Navy aviator and one of the most powerful members of Congress.
According to the 2004 Peregrine indictment, Powanda began serving in the office of the chairman of the board in July 2001. He reported to Chairman and CEO Stephen Gardner.
By the time he left the company in May 2002, Powanda had been paid $2 million in salary, bonuses and commissions, and he had exercised stock options worth about $30 million.
In other Peregrine legal news, a federal court indicted yet another former executive, Richard T. Nelson, the company's general counsel, on July 19.
Nelson, who...