Posted on 04/08/2011 8:05:04 PM PDT by BlackVeil
MIAMI — Barry Minkow has made many names for himself: as a boy-wonder entrepreneur, as a Ponzi schemer who served seven years in prison and then reinvented himself as a fraud-detection specialist, government informant and pastor.
His life took another turn when he was charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit securities fraud against the Lennar Corporation, one of the nation’s largest home builders.
The United States attorney’s office in Miami accused Mr. Minkow and an unnamed California-based conspirator of trying to extort cash and stock from Lennar after Mr. Minkow said the home builder operated “like a Ponzi scheme” that shuffles money from one subsidiary to another and hides bad debt.
Mr. Minkow made the accusations in a report on Jan. 9, 2009, one month after Bernard L. Madoff’s crimes came to light. Nervous investors bailed out of Lennar’s stock, and its price plunged 20 percent in a single day. Within two days, the company had lost nearly $500 million from its stock-market value.
Two weeks after his report, Mr. Minkow described Lennar as “a financial crime in progress” in a YouTube video.
Despite insisting publicly that he was not “shorting” Lennar’s stock — betting that its price would fall — Mr. Minkow had made money from shorting the stock through intermediaries, prosecutors claim.
Prosecutors also said Mr. Minkow “abused his pre-existing relationship with federal law enforcement agencies to report allegations of criminal conduct purportedly committed by Lennar and its management.”
Mr. Minkow, 44, intends to plead guilty to a single federal conspiracy charge on Wednesday and cooperate with the investigation, his lawyer, Alvin E. Entin, said Thursday. Mr. Minkow faces a maximum of five years in prison.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It was only a year later that his empire began to totter and fall.
I once heard an album by Barry Manilow. Total scam.
Minkow conned a lot of senior citizens out of their life savings. When he emerged from prison as a "reformed person," I figured it was just another con. Apparently, it was.
Once a scam artist, always a scam artis.
Look at the Kenyan Con Man who scammed his way into the Oval Office. He’s not even fit to empty the wastepaper baskets in there.
Discovered a long time ago that 99% of those selling books saying how great they were and giving advice on how to get rich are worthless. A true rich man is to busy making more money are spending it on some young thing.
Whenever I hear of someone who is alleged to have “scammed” people out of money and the term “Ponzi Scheme” is used I have to ask if he has done anything different than our congress does on a daily basis.
As I understand it, there is no such thing as an "ex" felon.
There can be an "ex" con, but a felon is always just that (unless pardoned by the thugocracy).
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Anybody who is getting rich is doing something uncommon. If everybody did the same thing, it would become common and then nobody would get rich that way.
Does anybody really think that a person who is getting rich doing something uncommon is really going to tell you how he’s doing it?
If so, please meet me at the Brooklyn Bridge, I just might have something to sell you.
I had precisely the same reaction. Once a sociopath always a sociopath.
LOL, right on, right on
That’s fascinating. I take it that Minkow had a good front and was most convincing?
Minkow had a rug cleaning business, but he didn’t know who was backing him until it was too late. The Mafia works like that. They used his business as a money laundry.
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