Eddie Antar grew a single electronics store in Brooklyn into one of the most memorable stock frauds of the late 1980s.
Renowned for its late-night TV commercials touting “in-saaane” prices, “Crazy Eddie” began as a family-run skimming operation. It stole sales tax money, manipulated inventories, filed false insurance claims and paid employees off the books.
Thriving on ill-gotten gains, it expanded to more than 40 stores in four states with reported annual sales of more than $300 million (or so they say).
Antar shipped millions in skimmed loot to banks in Israel. But he eventually realized he could make more money by selling stock to the public. To accomplish this, he needed to cook the books, and he put his accountant cousin, Sam Antar, in the kitchen.
“I was trained to be a criminal since I was 14 years old,” Sam Antar said in an interview. “I went to college for the purpose of being a better criminal. My cousin Eddie paid for my education. I did it. I loved it.”
Why?
“Money, greed, power, stature, family loyalty and just for the fun of doing it,” said Sam Antar, who offers an insider’s description of the fraud on his website.
In the years before its initial public stock offering, Crazy Eddie slowly reduced its skimming operations, making it appear to future shareholders that profits were exploding. After its IPO launched in 1984, its stock soared from $8 to $72. Months later, the company imploded under the weight of its Byzantine accounting frauds.
It was liquidated following a 1989 bankruptcy filing.
Eddie Antar took off for Israel and dodged justice for years, but he finally received an eight-year prison sentence in 1997. He was released in 1999 and died in 2016 at the age of 68.
Sam Antar avoided a prison sentence by cooperating with prosecutors, but he once said he has never found redemption.
“There is no redemption,” he said. “Redemption is for you, the noncriminal, who believes that human beings are capable of wonderful things.”