Michael “Mickey” Monus – Phar-Mor
He played doctor with the books. His pharmacy chain kept bleeding.
Sam Walton couldn’t figure out how Michael “Mickey” Monus could open 300 stores in 33 states in just ten years.
What the Walmart founder didn’t know was that Monus was doctoring the books at Phar-Mor, the pharmacy chain he founded in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, in 1982.
The fast-growing retailer falsely inflated earnings to conceal massive operating losses. The $1 billion scheme involved every trick from fake inventory counts to bogus invoices.
Phar-Mor filed bankruptcy in 1992. And in 1995, Monus was convicted on 109 counts of fraud and embezzlement. He subsequently served 10 years in prison.
The chain once boasted 25,000 employees and $3 billion in revenue.
“Having reached the 300th store, there’s no stopping us now to being a national retailer and to having a store in every major market across the country,” Monus said at the top of his game.
Monus was former high school basketball player who stood 5’9” tall. He and went on to create the very short-lived World Basketball League, a professional minor league featuring players under under 6’5” tall.
He was also an original owner of the Colorado Rockies baseball team that began playing in 1993.
To fund his sports fantasies, and to support his lavish lifestyle, Monus embezzled about $10 million from Phar-Mor as the retailer crumbled.
Monus made history in the 1990s for perpetrating one of the largest corporate frauds in U.S. history – only to be surpassed by Enron and WorldCom in the 2000s.