The $60 million in lawsuits cover a series of botched deals for art, real-estate and other expensive toys. The root cause, however, as PEHub's Connie Loizos writes, is that Minor has been "living like a billionaire." (Coincidentally, $60 million is also what he hoped to spend on a Gulfstream jet — a deal that he claims fell through because of a lender's misdeeds.)

Minor is contesting all of these lawsuits, and has filed some countersuits of his own. But think about what it says that all these institutions devoted to serving the wealthy are suing the entrepreneur. If they thought there was money to be made with Minor down the road, would they be contesting his dealings in court as opposed to quietly working out a settlement?

What Minor doesn't have, according to at least one lawsuit filed against him: cash on hand. He's being sued by Sotheby's and Christie's for nonpayment of artwork he bid on. Merrill Lynch is suing over a $25 million loan it extended. Silverton Bank, the lender for a Charlottesville hotel, is suing for $10.5 million in missed payments.

Sotheby's says Minor told its employees that he couldn't pay because he didn't have the cash, a charge he testily disputes. In his lawsuit with Merrill, he contends that the investment bank's move to freeze his account forced him to sell other investments at a loss — again, a move he wouldn't have had to make if he had the cash on hand. He also claims Merrill's merger with Bank of America scotched the financing for his Gulfstream jet.

His splurges, chronicled in Portfolio last year include:

• A divorce which cost him roughly half of the $100 million fortune he walked away from CNET with, as well as the $300 million he made as an investor in Salesforce.com.
• An estate in Charlottesville, Va.
• A $15.3 million plantation in Williamsburg, Va.
• A $20 million home in Bel Air, which he's been trying to sell without success; it's now listed at $11.4 million.
• 
  
• A $22 million house in San Francisco's Presidio Heights neighborhood, for which he'd hired celebrity designer Michael Smith to oversee a $15 million makeover.
• A $30 million luxury hotel development in downtown Charlottesville, now on hold amidst a lawsuit.
• A $3 million deposit on the $58.5 million Gulfstream G650 jet.
• A modern art collection, including several works by Richard Prince, whose estimated value runs into the tens of millions of dollars.
• A host of startups under the umbrella of his investment firm, Minor Ventures. One of them, 8020 Media, flamed out spectacularly earlier this year.

The picture that these lawsuits paint is one of an angry dotcom mogul with a vanished fortune who's looking for someone else to blame for his woes. As a riches-to-rags story, it makes for great art.

The old adage about money not buying happiness has never been truer. Money makes Minor angry. He is thinking about suing his bank. He's already sued an auction house which helped him buy art. And now he's suing an auction house which helped him sell art. When he's not busy filing lawsuits, he occupies himself by posting enraged comments on blogs.

The latest tussle: Minor is suing Christie's for allegedly failing to return seven Richard Prince paintings he had consigned to them. Christie's says his lawsuit has no merit, and it plans to countersue for $10 million plus legal expenses.

If it follows through on the legal threat, Christie's will join Sotheby's, which is already suing Minor for failing to pay for a set of paintings, including Edward Hicks's "Peaceable Kingdom."

Art makes Minor mad. After a spat with Damien Hirst, he removed several of the artist's butterfly tableaux from the walls of Minor Ventures, his San Francisco startup incubator, leaving fist-sized holes in the plaster, according to Portfolio.

So why is Minor spending money on art instead of making it himself? This kind of rage, channeled into creative endeavors, could command high prices even in a depressed market. His Internet comments are a whole new form of literary oeuvre. His work is fresh, surprising, visceral, and inexplicable — everything the jaded art world desires.

I ran my company, CNET [a Nasdaq 100 technology news site] during the 2002 bubble [when many .coms dot-coms crashed].... It was a crazy, tumultuous time. But I told everybody, our primary principles are No. 1, we care about our users [clients], our advertisers and Wall Street in that order. There are people who reverse that order and they might make immediate money, but they build nothing with longevity. I recently sold CNET for $1.8 billion to CBS.

Minor stepped down as CNET's CEO in 2000, not 2002. And it strains credulity for him to claim he had anything to do with CBS's purchase of the site. it's quite possible Sotheby's misled Minor, as he claims, in selling him the paintings he bid on. But whoppers like these make me less inclined to believe the missives that issue forth from Minor's keyboard. Minor, a genuinely talented entrepreneur who spotted the potential of the Web long before others, deserves plenty of credit for creating CNET in the 1990s; why does he feel the need to inflate what he's accomplished since leaving it?

First, Minor disputes the contention that he advised CNET employees to hold onto their shares when he stepped down as CEO of the Web-content company in 2000:

man, whats the deal with the content?  i never told anyone to keep their options, quite the opposite. 

this seems like the angry people of America convention.  I have heard how nasty Valleywag can get and i guess this is just the first time i have been in your scope.  why i have no idea. 

I guess i should make sure i don't get into another lawsuit with sotheby's, the firm whose prior 2 top executives went to sing sing.  the only problem i have is since they are the ACTUAL wrong doer, but first filer,  i am not sure i'll be able to keep that promise.

How about giving them a hard time next time.  They have a website so they should be fair game.

I then asked Minor about Sotheby's claim that he told the auction house that the reason he hadn't paid for the paintings was that he had to collect on money owed to him by others, not the conflict of interest issue he brought up later. He also suggests he's still interested in buying the Hicks painting, but at a "big fat discount":

why would they discuss various conversational scripts before they were due the money?  what is the purpose?  just say i didn't pay them.  I will tell everyone i didn't pay them.  they are correct.  Just so you know if they were to sell the art they still hold they may lose $1 mm to $2 mm which i would be responsible for.  The $16 mm lawsuit makes it seem like i torched the art with a blow torch and ran.  Usually they immediately go back to the next highest bidder in a situation like this.  this time they did not.

now lets discuss why i did not pay.  they were owed $11.5 mm from a bankrupt jeweler, and were having account receivable problems noted in the WSJ and Portfolio magazine at this time, and they had one painting to get it all back.  No Peaceable Kingdom had ever sold for more than $6  mm.  that means they owned the painting since it was there only means of getting paid off.  its just like a broker showing you houses. he has to let you know if one belongs to him if he was showing it to you.  Sotheby's must show a triangle by the lot number in these cases.  Many people believe it should be way more evident.  I was sold this painting by the American specialist.  I thought she was serving as an expert but in fact she was a saleswoman for Sotheby's.

The reason they can't sell my art to the next bidder or say I am incapable of paying (notice that has never been said) is because their liability only goes up.  Instead we get a story about the dog who ate my money.  well he barfed it back up and in 30 days unless there is a big fat discount offered they will be looking at a counter suit coming right back at them.  This time the dog ate my money story will be old hat but the facts they hid will be new juicy news.

They tried to intimidate me and the story grew far larger than they expected and blew up in there face.  I enjoy collecting art but its not my business.  It is there business and they rely on people's trust and confidence.  Even if they were right I would be creating a reasonable doubt about there business practices.  Considering the last CEO and Chairman did jail time I think I would have taken another tact.  i would have confessed and tried to work something out. I would have been reasonable then but not now.

Now you can call off the Society of Angry People and have the story make sense.

Minor then elaborated:

And Owen you were listening to 2 PR flacks who spent the weekend with a whiteboard strategizing what to say and were never part of ANY of the conversations.  You should call them up and ask them if they actually heard — themselves — any of the things they are quoting out of my mouth.

Rule 1 of the internet is communication is direct and transparent even if it can get combative.  No one hides behind anyone else.  As a group that should get the web I am shocked you didn't call the PR team up and ask them if they actually heard these things.  why doesn't the ceo speak or some one i was talking to.  Owen you guys can do anything you want on your blog but when you perpetuate the PR flack model it irks me.  Its not old school its idiotic for spinmasters to comminate instead of real people.  The New York Times was more skeptical of the "pr team" then you guys were.  To me there is no more basic rule of journalism today then you speak for yourself. And no this is not a dog writing.

"They have a massive failure to disclose,'' Minor told Bloomberg. "They have an economic interest to misrepresent the facts." Minor plans to countersue.

Longtime CNET employees might say the same about Minor. In March 2000, when he stepped down as CEO right before the Nasdaq peaked, he said, "As a large shareholder, I would not have made this move unless I thought I would generate more value to shareholders this way." Inside the company, he encouraged employees to hold onto their shares, too.

It was technically true that Minor remained a large shareholder. But through a financial maneuver known as a collar, he guaranteed that his shares would hold their value, even if the stock price dropped. The CNET employees he encouraged to stay and hold onto their shares had no such protection. It was a massive failure to disclose. He had an economic interest to misrepresent the facts.

The curious thing: Having protected his CNET fortune eight years ago, why did Minor claim he didn't have the money to pay for the art he purchased? He's spending heavily on real estate, including a $15.3 million, 476-acre estate in Williamsburg, Va., and Florida's Hialeah Park racetrack. Could Minor's investments have gone so sour that he's been caught in a cash crunch? If so, forgive CNET employees who saw their options sink underwater, on Minor's advice, a moment of schadenfreude.