Barry Minkow Biography

For the first part of his life Barry Minkow made headlines for being the youngest person in United States business history to take a company public through an S-1 registration statement before he was 21 years old. However his company ZZZZ Best Co. Inc. (which at one time had a $300 million dollar public stock evaluation) was built on fraud and deceit. In an unprecedented case for its era Barry Minkow was able to secure three clean audit opinions from two separate accounting firms a cold comfort letter on the ZZZZ Best Co. Inc. registration statement from a large prestigious Wall Street law firm and another quarterly review and cold comfort letter from a Big 8 accounting firm. He amassed over $20 million in loans from 15 different banks including three investment banks and several private individuals – all for a company whose actual revenues were 86% less than what they reported and who never earned a profit in the five years ZZZZ Best Co. Inc. was in business (October 1982 to July 1987).
Unlike most white-collar criminals Barry Minkow did not receive a slap on the wrist and an 18-month stay at a golf course prison camp for his crimes. Quite the contrary… Mr. Minkow served more time in custody than Michael Milken Nick Lesson and Leona Helmsley combined. For the most part he served his sentence in maximum and medium security facilities and one of his cellmates was serving time for murder. As a result of this long prison stay no one is better equipped to talk about the consequences of compromise than Barry Minkow. His incarceration time totaled seven years and four months (January 1988 to April 1995).

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