Argyros controls a diversified, real estate-based fortune. Forbes listed this ex-owner of the Seattle Mariners ball team among the 400 richest Americans in ’91. Apria Healthcare’s board asked Argyros to step down as chair under a conflict-of-interest cloud in ’98. Argyros repeatedly opposed plans to sell the company—until its stock price bottomed out. Then, he himself tried to buy the nation’s largest home health care chain on the cheap. “For the past six months, George has vigorously argued that this was the wrong time to sell the company because it was too cheap,” a source told the Los Angeles Times. “Now suddenly it’s the right time, as long as he’s buying it.” A decade earlier, Argyros spun the revolving door in Orange County, California, where he made a real estate fortune. Then-County Supervisor Bruce Nestande resigned to become an Argyros lobbyist during an ‘87 political-corruption probe (Nestande returned $18,000 in contributions from a businessman convicted of paying bribes to influence a county dump contract).