Barry Minkow was born on March 22, 1966 in Inglewood, California. While still in high school, he found a carpet cleaning and restoration company called ZZZZ Best and took it public by 1986 - even before he turned 20. The company had over 1000 employees and was valued at $210 million dollars in early 1987. He became the youngest person to lead a company through an IPO.
Starting his business from his parents garage, now ZZZZ Best had offices throughout Southern California. But it didn't last long. He was writing fraudulent checks, cooking books, and committing other financial frauds to give the impression that the company was fine.
He got caught and went to jail for a few years. Then became a pastor when he got released.
While working as a pastor in San Diego, he also found a company called Fraud Discovery Institute, a profit investigative firm. He wrote reports on firms he believed to be committing frauds and these reports would often cause the stock price of companies being investigated to drop. Minkow would use this knowledge to short companies.
This was not illegal but unethical. However, he eventually did get caught another scam.
He was trying to short a homebuilder Lennar and accused of it of committing accounting fraud. Problem was that Minkow was forging documents to back up his claim. He was also siphoning off church money to run his fraudulent business.
He's now behind bars again and is expected to be released next year in 2019.
$612 million - this is the amount he needs to pay back as restitution.
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