Barry Minkow Essay

Barry Minkow, at the age of twelve, was introduced to the carpet cleaning world because of his mother who had worked in this industry for his whole life. At the age of thirteen, Barry made his company ZZZZ Best Company in his parent’s garage. His company started out as a small, door-to-door carpet cleaning operation. The carpet cleaning industry was an easy market to get into due to the fact that licensure was not required. This made competition fierce and for a thirteen year old with little finances, his company would soon collapse. This failure would lead Barry down the road to financial statement fraud and manipulation. (Wells, 2001) The biggest problem the Barry had with his company was the fact that he couldn’t stay afloat financially. He was always behind on money so he ended up over charging his customers, stealing checks, and check kiting. When that wasn’t enough he would get bank loans. Barry would get loans to pay off previous loans and the vicious cycle would continue. Barry was a smooth talker that could charm his way through situations. He had conned an insurance claim adjuster to lie to bankers or other interested third parties about occasionally getting insurance restoration contracts, to make his business

In 1988, at the age of 21, Minkow began serving his prison sentence for several counts of securities fraud, racketeering, money laundering, embezzlement, mail fraud, tax evasion and bank fraud. Minkow was later placed on a five year probation period and made to pay $26 million for damages. During the time that Minkow was sentenced, the U.S. District Court Judge, Dickran Tevrizian, stated that Minkow was, “a man without a conscience.” The Securities Exchange Commission later banned Barry Minkow from ever becoming an officer or director of a public company ever again. (Parloff,