Barry Minkow: ZZZZ Best Whiz Kid, Fraud Hunter, and Crooked Pastor

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Barry Minkow was a telemarketer for a carpet cleaner at nine and the founder of ZZZZ Best at 16, running it from his parents' garage before he had a driver's license. By 1987 Wall Street valued the company at $280 million. This episode explains what the valuation rested on: a fake insurance restoration division, verified to banks by a phantom firm called Interstate Appraisal Services, that supplied 86 percent of reported revenue. A homemaker he had overcharged by a few hundred dollars took her diary of his frauds to the Los Angeles Times, and the empire fell.

The second act is stranger. Released in 1995 after about seven and a half years, Minkow became pastor of the Community Bible Church in San Diego and founded the Fraud Discovery Institute, earning praise on 60 Minutes as a reformed con man. The episode shows how he turned that reputation into a short and distort operation against public companies, how an attack on homebuilder Lennar exposed him, and how he was stealing from his own congregation the whole time.

To fool auditors, Minkow bribed a security guard at a Sacramento building under construction, hung ZZZZ Best banners, and gave a tour of a site he did not own.
He planned a $25 million merger with KeyServ, the authorized carpet cleaner for Sears, hoping its real cash flow would fill the hole in his Ponzi scheme.
Herbalife paid him $300,000 to withdraw his claims, and his 500-page report on Usana sent its stock from over $61 to under $35.
He pleaded guilty in 2011 to conspiracy to commit insider trading and was ordered to pay Lennar $583.5 million in restitution.
He embezzled more than $3 million from his church, including $75,000 a widower meant for a hospital in Sudan and $300,000 from a grandmother.

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