Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

D Magazine, Jun 01, 2003 by Rogers, Tim

ACCOUNTS DIFFER AS TO WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED ABOARD THE Cartoush II during its pleasure cruise in the Bahamas in September 2001. Darwin Deason denies that he threatened to kill the chef. Others claim he did. "There certainly was a threat of getting a gun and doing something," says one person intimately acquainted with the details of the incident. As for the chef, he isn't saying much.

The 118-foot luxury yacht ostensibly belonged to Deason, founder and chairman of Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services, or ACS. Deason himself had overseen a major refit of the boat the year before, which entailed reinforcing the upper deck so that it could support a massive hot tub. Playing host to his friends on the boat, Deason liked to smoke marijuana and drink the unthinkable concoction of Diet Coke and Kahlua out of a large brandy snifter. The passengers on that particular voyage, besides the captain and crew of four, included former Cowboys punter Mike Saxon and his wife Suzanne; Dallasite CarterAbercrombie and his wife Angie; and Deason. He was 61 at the time. Having recently divorced his fourth wife, he was traveling without a companion.

The Cartoush was sailing the waters off the Exuma chain of islands when the trouble started. It was in the early afternoon, and Deason, for one reason or another, flew into a rage. "The guy was definitely having a psychotic episode," says a source. He began yelling at the chef, Vinny Feola, who locked himself in his quarters. As the standoff dragged on for hours, the ship's captain, Don Hopkins, worked the satellite phone, frantically trying to reach someone back in Dallas who could mollify Deason. Another source says that Deason pulled Saxon and Abercrombie aside and asked them, "Would you guys be willing to beat the shit out of the chef for me if I asked you to?"

Eventually Feola was put off the boat at tiny Staniel Cay, about 80 miles southeast of Nassau, where he was stuck for several days because all flights had been grounded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "I really kind of don't like to talk about it," Feola says now. "For whatever reason, I wanted to get off the boat. I have nothing bad to say about anybody, and I never will say anything bad about anybody, because I believe in karma."

Deason says he can't recall why he was angry with the chef, except to say, "The guy was insubordinate. He wouldn't do what I told him to do. So I fired him. There were some words, but there weren't any threats of killing." He still bristles at learning about the maritime law that governs the discharging of crew at sea. "If I had known this, I wouldn't have been so stupid as to fire him," he says. "I had to pay for and arrange a seaplane to come pick him up and fly him back to Florida."

Deason, now worth about $500 million, dismisses the entire incident as little more than a boisterous disagreement. Not every parting of ways ends with hugs and kisses (as any number of former Cartoush crewmembers could tell you, including three who summarily disembarked the day Deason came aboard for that Bahamian cruise). Assuming, then, that every story has two sides and the truth lies somewhere in between, we're not really talking here about the commission of any crimes-except for the heinous cocktail of Diet Coke and Kahlua. But more on that later.

Rather, the serious matter-the one that may yet hold repercussions for Deason and for the Fortune 500 company still under his sway-isn't what happened aboard the Cartoush. It turns out to be the Cartoush itself. In papers filed earlier this year in federal court, it is claimed that Deason, as the chairman and controlling stockholder of ACS, set up a complex scheme of off-balance-sheet corporations that, in essence, provided him free use of not only the Cartoush II and its predecessor, but also a squadron of private jets-all at the expense of taxpayers and the companies he controlled. The charges may interest the SEC and the IRS.

But to get to the Gulfstream jets and the yachts and the penthouses and all the lawyers, you have to start in Rogers, Arkansas, with only $50.

In the Beginning

There exists an official canon of Darwin Deason's up-from-thebootstraps biography, published in profiles over the years. The first chapter begins on the day after his high school graduation, also his 18th birthday. He borrows the $50 from his father, a farmer, and lights out for Tulsa in an old Pontiac. He lands a job as a mailboy at a division of Gulf Oil, thinking he'll work his way to the top. On coffee breaks, he pitches quarters with the lads in data processing, and his talents in that field win him an entry-level job sorting IBM punch cards-forebears of the giant mainframes that will one day make him rich. But at his fifthyear celebration, his boss's boss mistakenly gives young Deason's anniversary pin to someone else. He shakes Deason's hand and calls him Bill. Deason, embarrassed, realizes he'll always be a lowly wage slave if he stays, so he quits a few weeks later. End of chapter one.