From the Magazine | Business
Scambuster Inc.

Barry Minkow, felon, is helping the feds uncover fraudulent financial schemes

By ADAM ZAGORIN
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
A roomful of agents was waiting expectantly at the FBI's principal training facility at Quantico, Va., when a wiry, intense man stepped to the microphone. Pointing to a video camera recording the session, he tried to break the ice. "I notice you guys are videotaping me," he deadpanned. "And I want to thank the FBI, because this is the first time you have let me know in advance that the recorders were on."

Count Barry Minkow as one of the more unlikely people ever to be a law-enforcement lecturer. A felon, he was busted in his early 20s by the FBI for engineering one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history. His ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning scam, a mid-1980s securities caper, was worth $300 million before it went up in smoke. That rap landed him in a federal pen on a 25-year sentence. After serving seven years and four months, he got out in 1995 and, like the con man portrayed in the hit movie Catch Me If You Can, he started helping the feds. "Three weeks out of jail, my arresting officer extended an invitation to speak at an FBI conference on bank fraud," recalls Minkow, 38. "When you're a failure and get a second chance, you don't want to let people down." A new autobiography, Cleaning Up: One Man's Redemptive Journey Through the Seductive World of Corporate Crime, documents how he has uncovered more than $1 billion worth of fraud in the past 14 months alone. "Barry has now recovered far more fraud than he ever perpetrated," says James Asperger, a former head of the major-fraud section of the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles, who prosecuted the case against Minkow.

Given his history, one can't help wondering whether Minkow's reincarnation is a story of redemption or just another clever ploy. (Of course, there's not a lot of money in teaching FBI recruits.) A nerdy kid, the son of lower-middle-class parents in California's San Fernando Valley, Minkow says he got into scamming at the age of 16 and set up ZZZZ Best in his parents' garage so he could impress girls. "I learned that money brought respect, and it was like a narcotic," he says. "I couldn't live without it." At its peak, ZZZZ Best had 1,400 employees at 23 locations in three states. But the reality was something else: more than 85% of ZZZZ Best's cash flow came from undisclosed loans fronted by organized crime in New York City--all booked as revenue for supposed contracts to renovate distressed housing. When the FBI finally unraveled the scheme, Minkow managed to pay off his Mafia loan sharks ("You can't mess with them," he says), but some $300 million worth of company stock was suddenly worthless, leaving hundreds of investors in the lurch.

Read Full Story