Mar
Barry Minkow – Once a Crook, Still a Crook
Barry Minkow, who gained notoriety as a 16 year-old precocious founder of the ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning company in the 1980s that was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.
Now his attorney Alvin Entin has revealed that Minkow has reached an “agreement in principle” with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and will be pleading guilty to one count of trading on non-public information (insider trading). Hopefully he will receive and (fully) serve the possible five year sentence. Minkow is making this plea even though he has not been charged.
Barry Minkow was sentenced to 25 years in prison for 57 counts of fraud in ZZZZ Best. After his unfortunate early release, the born-again Minkow became a pastor at Community Bible Church in San Diego and founded the Fraud Discovery Institute, supposedly to catch people like himself. Minkow was accused of using the Fraud Discovery Institute to post articles on his web site about publicly traded firms he was “investigating” , then purchase options that he would short. The firm in question was Lennar Corp., a Miami-based home builder.
Read the original article in the Wall Street Journal.
