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MarketWatch
What 2 crooks told me over lunch
By Herb Greenberg
Commentary: “You cannot accept information at face value”
This column first appeared in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend.SAN DIEGO (MarketWatch) — My lunch with two crooks: “Hi Sammy, it’s great to see you.” Barry Minkow gave Sam E. Antar a hug as we walked to our table at a fish restaurant overlooking San Diego Bay. It was a Friday, and Antar made the trek to San Diego from Los Angeles, where he was visiting his son; a few days earlier, this convicted felon had lectured students and faculty at the Stanford Law School on how not to get taken by a crook like him.Antar was chief financial officer of Crazy Eddie, a New York electronics retailer that in the 1970s and 1980s claimed “our prices are inSANE” as it bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. He stayed out of jail by turning on several others, including his cousin, Eddie Antar, who was Crazy Eddie’s co-founder. Minkow, on the other hand, spent seven years behind bars after stealing more than $20 million from investors in the 1980s as founder and chief executive of ZZZZ Best, a once-hot rug-cleaning company whose books could’ve used a good scrubbing.”He’s an orthodox Jew and I’m a Jew who is a pastor,” cracks Minkow, who like Antar now spends time lecturing and working with cops to bust white-collar financial frauds. Minkow has reverence for Antar, who looks like Carla’s husband from the sitcom “Cheers” and who claims to suffer from a bipolar disorder and serious insomnia. (I can vouch for the latter because his e-mails and postings on blogs come at all hours, mostly in the middle of the night.) “Criminals don’t sleep,” he explains.A former CPA, Antar makes no excuses for his criminal past, referring to himself in e-mails, casual discussion and his Web site — whitecollarfraud.com1 — as a “low life” and “convicted felon.” Even the normally loquacious Minkow appears to enjoy leaving the talking to Antar, who takes no money for his speeches. “I don’t want to be held up on the pedestal of redemption,” he says. “I would rather people learn from my vile, ugly and vicious crimes. It is most important that they understand the ugly nature of criminality. My life is a mistake of history.”A mistake, maybe, but one other people can learn from. “Do not trust verify,” was his mantra as the meal began.Verify what? “Everything.”Even whether Antar and Minkow aren’t still scamming?“Everything.”
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The scam artists listed in this article are legends of notoriety or even infamy. They are brand name scammers who made and possibly lost fortunes by playing one illegal angle or another. Corra has known people like these and for the most part they can be very colorful characters.But then these are the well known guys who are out of the scamming business. They are public figures. But what about the guy working in your business who is quietly running scams of his own. What kind of scams? They could be selling off your sensitive databases, diverting inside information to your competitors. They could be stealing sensitive intellectual property and peddling it to the highest bidder. You don’t think so? Thing again. The business section of the paper will often contain an article detailing one scam or another.That’s why Corra always recommends running a criminal check on new employees, and a credit check on job candidates and, periodically, on current employees with access to sensitive information. Education Verification is as important as Employment Verification to help ascertain if this candidate is going to be an asset to you company or a silent and deadly partner.
As Corra says, check them out before you hire.
