Fugitive Telit boss Oozi Cats pocketed £24m from firm
Oozi Cats yesterday resigned as the chief executive of Telit Communications
A chief executive ousted over allegations he was on the run from US law enforcement made £24.5million from the tech firm he founded.
Oozi Cats yesterday resigned as the boss of Telit Communications after he and wife Ruth were linked to a string of so-called 'land flip' scams carried out in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1990s by an Uzi and Ruth Katz.
The 56-year-old's resignation was announced to the stock market yesterday after a swift internal probe, with bosses claiming they knew nothing of historic allegations of fraud made against him.
The Mail can reveal that Cats took £24.5million pay and bonuses from Telit over 13 years. Over that same period Telit only made £65million profit.
The Cats were accused of trying to scam lenders with bogus mortgage applications which vastly overvalued properties, according to court documents.
HOW HE WAS RUMBLED Claims Oozi Cats was in fact 'Uzi Katz', a fugitive of the US justice system, first emerged in an Italian newspaper last week. The paper is thought to have been investigating Telit Communications and Cats due to an ongoing probe by Italian prosecutors into the collapse of electronics manufacturer Bames. It is thought this led to investigators digging in to Cats's past and discovered lawsuits filed in Boston in 1992 under the name Uzi Katz and his wife Ruth. The allegations linking the two names together sent Telit Communications's share price tumbling.
The alleged fraud in 1991 attracted the attention of special agents from the FBI and was due to be examined in a trial involving 20 witnesses.
But only Ruth Katz ever appeared in court – pleading not guilty – and the couple later fled the States.
Telit yesterday said solicitors had concluded Cats and Katz were the same person.
Cats' wife has the same birth date as the Ruth Katz named in court documents, the Mail understands, and he has not denied he is the person named in an indictment.
Professor Anne Hassett, who teaches law in New York and said she represented Katz, told the Mail the case ended because her client was 'no longer in the district'.
Cats has only spoken to Telit executives by phone in the past week.
He is understood to have returned to his home in Rome. He could not be reached for comment last night.