ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how Barry Minkow founded the ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning Company in his parents’ garage and built a successful business with multiple offices and hundreds of employees. The most of ZZZZ Best’s existence, simply meeting the payroll was a weekly challenge. One factor contributing to ZZZZ Best’s cash flow problems was the huge amount of cash required to service the company’s debt. The ZZZZ Best fraud was simply a matter of disguising the loan proceeds and repayments. The ZZZZ Best fraud was carried out by one of the strangest groups of conspirators ever assembled. The Barry’s gang included a former linebacker and doctoral candidate turned accountant; a gun-loving white separatist; and a 300–pound amateur philosopher with a prior conviction for cocaine abuse. The Securities and Exchange Commission also concluded that Greenspan had failed to gather sufficient evidence regarding ZZZZ Best’s revenues. The prosecution rested its case after presenting voluminous evidence of Barry’s involvement in the fraud.
