Victor Posner, former corporate raider and once chairman of the defunct Sharon Steel Corp., died Monday of pneumonia at the Miami Heart Institute in Florida. He was 83.

A controversial figure, Posner was a pioneer in buying businesses through public companies he controlled. His empire was once valued at $4 billion, but he was often criticized for saddling those new companies with enormous debt and being an absentee manager, much as he was with Sharon Steel.

Posner controlled about 87 percent of Sharon Steel's stock through NVF Corp., a Delaware company, which he used to buy the Farrell steelmaker about 1970. A profitable company at the time, Sharon Steel was known for producing stainless steel, which had solid profit margins.

Shortly after Posner acquired the company, Sharon Steel ditched its stainless steel lines and was heaped with debt by Posner. A combination of the debt and the brutal downturn of the steel industry pummeled the Farrell steelmaker in the early '80s.

It was at about that time that Shenango Valley communities renamed the road in front of Sharon Steel from Broadway to Victor Posner Boulevard.

It was a contentious move at the time and emotions were stirred even further when in 1994 a judge found Posner and his son, Steven, guilty of violating federal securities law by failing to disclose a fraudulent takeover scheme between them and Wall Street investment tycoons Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

The judge barred the Posners from serving as officers or directors of any publicly held company and ordered them to repay about $4 million they had received from Fischbach Corp., the New York electrical company targeted in the scheme.

In 1987, Victor Posner pleaded no contest to tax-evasion and was ordered to give $3 million to the homeless and serve meals in a shelter.

The road name was restored to Broadway later in the decade.

Sharon Steel filed for its first bankruptcy on April 17, 1987, and Posner was ousted as the company's chairman and chief executive officer. Emerging from bankruptcy under new ownership from New York-based Castle-Harlan Corp., the steelmaker was plunged into bankruptcy again on Nov. 30, 1992. With 2,700 employees, Sharon Steel was the largest local employer.

Shortly after the bankruptcy filing, Sharon Steel creditors discovered more than a dozen original Norman Rockwell paintings of the steelmaker and its employees were missing.

At first, Posner said he didn't know their whereabouts. Later he acknowledged he had the paintings at his corporate headquarters in Florida. All but one were returned. It is believed the remaining painting was given to a Sharon Steel customer.

Sharon Steel's second bankruptcy is nearing its end with a final bankruptcy court hearing scheduled for March 19.

Since the second bankruptcy, the mill was sold to Caparo Group and now is owned by Switzerland-based Duferco Group; it goes by the name Duferco Farrell Corp. and employs about 500.

Posner led a colorful private life and was renowned for having young girlfriends who frequently worked with him at his Victoria Plaza headquarters in Miami Beach.

Jim Feeney, the recently retired executive vice president at Wheatland Tube Co., who is now chief executive officer of Protected Home Mutual Life Insurance Co., Sharon, recalls meeting with Posner several times at Victoria Plaza in the early '70s. Posner was interested in buying Wheatland Tube and Feeney, along with other Wheatland Tube executives, met with him to listen to the offer.

It turned out not to be much of a deal. The offer was Posner would pay only the interest on the debt to buy Wheatland Tube and would take the principal on years 28 through 30.

"After hearing that, my boss stood up, said thank you for your time and good bye,'' Feeney said.