EADS, Tenn. — A Shelby County businessman arrested Monday for selling drugs is now charged with two counts of aggravated rape and is being held on a million dollar bond.
Deputies raided the estate of Mark Giannini Monday and found prescription pills and dozens of guns.
Gianinni is the founder and former CEO of Service Assurance, a computer and information technology company which he sold to Konica-Minolta.
The rape charges were added Wednesday.
Shelby County deputies say they had to pry open his private gate to investigate after a warrant named him in a drug-related assault.
Sculptures and art line his 11.5-acre estate.
Deputies say it Gianinni tried to escape in the woods when narcotics agents raided his Eads home, where they found more than $16,000 in cash, a variety of prescription drugs with no labels on the bottles and 24 fire arms.
Deputies say Gianinni escaped from the house, but later came out of the woods sweaty and scratched up.
They say Gianinni had Viagra, a passport, and about $6,000 in his pocket.
They locked him up for selling controlled substances, which is a felony, and that led to more charges because he had guns in his house.
He bonded out Tuesday and WREG snapped some pictures as he arrived home.
Gianinni didn’t want to talk to us.
“Hi. This is Mark. Thanks for calling,” said his answering machine, when we called him on his intercom.
“We could’ve borrowed his Lamborghini if we had known he was in the jail,” joked his next door neighbor, Lynne Briggs. “That would’ve been nice.”
Gianinni is a national speaker and published author, not someone neighbors expected to end up at 201 Poplar.
“He’s a really nice guy we never had any problems,” said Briggs.
The computer software businessman spent one night in jail and is now out on a $50,000 bond.
