The week's Top 10 tech stories

Verizon reached a deal to buy Alltel for $28.1 billion, which would make the combined company the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. over AT&T. While that was, arguably, the week's biggest news, it couldn't match the jaw-dropping word that Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas is accused by the government of storing drugs in a warehouse for more than nine years, and of spiking drinks of industry executives and customers with ecstasy. An indictment also charged him in an alleged stock option back-dating scheme.

1. Verizon Wireless to buy Alltel and In Alltel deal, Verizon bolsters Western front : Verizon wants to buy Alltel in a $28.1 billion deal that would leapfrog Verizon over AT&T to become the largest wireless provider in the U.S. Alltel is the fifth largest wireless carrier in the country and its 13 million customers would give Verizon 80 million subscribers compared to AT&T's 71 million or so. AT&T picked up more than a few of that total when it merged with Cingular in 2004.

2. Broadcom co-founder drugged drinks, indictment says : Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas maintained a warehouse for more than nine years where he kept drugs including ecstasy, methamphetamine and cocaine, according to a federal indictment charging him with possession and distribution of drugs and backdating stock options that led to the largest write-down in a backdating scandal at a U.S. company. Nicholas put ecstasy in the drinks of industry executives and Broadcom customers, the indictment alleges. Former Chief Financial Officer William Ruehle was also indicted in the alleged stock-option backdating.

3. Nvidia goes after Intel with Tegra processors, Intel, Via face off over low-cost laptops, and AMD lets cat out of bag with puma launch : At the giant Computex trade show in Taiwan this week, AMD unleashed its Puma laptop chip platform. And Nvidia got into the mobile Internet device market with its Tegra processor family based on the Arm core, which puts it in competition with Intel's Centrino Atom. Meanwhile, the heightened rivalry between Intel and Via was evident at the show. The two are squaring off as big guns in the thriving low-cost laptop market.

4. Google loses big in H-1B lottery as Congress gets new visa push  : Senators Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, and Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, introduced a Senate companion bill to a House of Representatives proposal that would allow foreign students who graduate from U.S. universities to have permanent resident status as long as they have a job offer. Meanwhile in H-1B visa news, Google officials said on a public blog that 90 of its 300 applications for such visas were denied in a lottery the government conducted after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 163,000 applications for 85,000 visas. Google is among the tech companies pushing hard for the U.S. to raise the cap on H-1B visas for skilled workers.