60 Facts About Barry Minkow

Barry Jay Minkow was born on March 22,1966 and is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon.

Three years later, Barry Minkow admitted to defrauding his own church and was sentenced to an additional five years in prison.

Barry Minkow is subject to restitution requirements totaling $612 million.

Barry Minkow was born in Inglewood, California, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the Reseda area of the San Fernando Valley.

Barry Minkow was plagued by customer complaints and demands for payment from suppliers.

Padgett and Barry Minkow formed a fake company, Interstate Appraisal Services, that verified the details of these restorations to Barry Minkow's bankers.

Barry Minkow raised money by factoring his accounts receivable for work under contract, as well as floating funds through several banks in an elaborate check kiting scheme.

Catain later sued Barry Minkow for not paying him his share of the company's profits, but Barry Minkow claimed Catain was a usurer.

Barry Minkow was a business partner with Robert Viggiano, a convicted jewel thief and reputed loanshark.

At the suggestion of a friend, Barry Minkow took his company public in January 1986, garnering a spot on NASDAQ.

Barry Minkow planned to sell a million shares to the public in January 1988, believing this would give him enough money to pay everyone off and go completely legitimate.

Barry Minkow owned a Ferrari and a BMW, and bought a mansion in the wealthy Valley community of Woodland Hills.

Barry Minkow now had 1,030 employees with offices in California, Arizona and Nevada.

Barry Minkow believed he'd found a solution when he learned that KeyServ, the authorized carpet cleaner for Sears, was being sold by its British parent.

Barry Minkow had blamed the fraudulent charges on unscrupulous contractors and another employee, and paid back most of the victims.

When he ignored her requests to pay her back, she tracked down several other people who had been defrauded by Barry Minkow and gave a diary of her findings to the Los Angeles Times.

The Times then wrote a story revealing that Barry Minkow had run up $72,000 in fraudulent credit card charges in 1984 and 1985.

Barry Minkow knew that those projects did not exist and decided to resign.

Barry Minkow was placed on five years' probation and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution.

Barry Minkow served under seven and a half years, most of them at Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood.

Barry Minkow's other substantial debt is a $7 million loan from Union Bank.

In 1997, Barry Minkow became pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego.

Barry Minkow claimed to have uncovered $1 billion worth of fraud through the FDI.

Barry Minkow's motives were brought into question by multiple news stories, which concluded that Barry Minkow was shorting stock before he released a report on a public company.

Barry Minkow's critics denounced this practice as unethical, if not illegal.

Barry Minkow continued to profit from his short sales position due to sharp decreases in the reported company's stock price immediately after releasing a new report.

On 20 February 2007, Barry Minkow distributed a 500-page report to officials at the SEC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service, accusing USANA of operating an illegal pyramid scheme.

Barry Minkow later acknowledged that he was shorting USANA's shares, hoping to profit from a drop in the stock price.

USANA filed lawsuits against Barry Minkow, accusing him of stock manipulation and defamation.

However, USANA dropped the defamation suit and a judge later threw out four of the five claims brought against Barry Minkow, ruling that the claims violated California's anti-SLAPP law for suing Barry Minkow for fair criticism.

The remaining charge of stock manipulation was settled in July 2008 when USANA and Barry Minkow reached an undisclosed settlement, which included the removal of all USANA-related materials from the FDI website, a related Chinese website, and from YouTube.

Several companies have since sued Barry Minkow for making false accusations against them, with most of the suits being settled out of court.

In 2009, Barry Minkow issued a report accusing major homebuilder Lennar of massive fraud, claiming that irregularities in the company's off-balance-sheet debt accounting were evidence of a massive Ponzi scheme.

Barry Minkow accused Lennar of not disclosing enough information about this to its shareholders, and claimed a Lennar executive had taken out a fraudulent personal loan.

Barry Minkow issued the report after being contacted by Nicholas Marsch, a San Diego developer who had filed two lawsuits against Lennar for fraud.

Barry Minkow was initially unconcerned, since he had prevailed before in similar cases on free speech grounds.

Barry Minkow initially denied doing this, only to be forced to recant when confronted with trading records.

Barry Minkow forged documents alleging misconduct on Lennar's part and lied about having to go to the emergency room on the night before he was first scheduled to testify.

Barry Minkow went forward with the report even after a private investigator he had hired for the case could not substantiate Marsch's claims.

Freeman found that Barry Minkow had repeatedly lied under oath, destroyed or withheld evidence, concealed witnesses, deliberately tried to "cover up his misconduct", and had even lied to his own lawyers about his behavior.

Freeman determined that Barry Minkow had perpetrated "a fraud on the court" that was so egregious that letting the case go any further would be a disservice to justice.

Barry Minkow ordered Minkow to reimburse Lennar for the legal expenses it incurred while ferreting out his lies.

On March 16,2011, Barry Minkow announced through his attorney that he was pleading guilty to one count of insider trading.

The complaint revealed that Barry Minkow had sent his allegations to the SEC, the FBI, and the IRS, and that the three agencies found his claims credible enough to open a formal criminal investigation into Lennar's practices.

Barry Minkow then used confidential knowledge of that investigation to short Lennar stock, even though he knew he was barred from doing so.

On March 30,2011, Minkow pleaded guilty before Judge Patricia A Seitz.

Barry Minkow faced a maximum of five years in prison, as much as $350,000 in fines and penalties and $500 million in restitution.

The Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the plea agreement, in which Barry Minkow admitted to issuing his FDI report on Lennar at Marsch's behest.

Barry Minkow faced a minimum of thirty years in prison had the case gone to trial.

Barry Minkow's ruling stated that Minkow and Marsch had entered into a conspiracy to wreck Lennar's stock in November 2008.

Barry Minkow recommended that Minkow serve his sentence at Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama.

One woman said Barry Minkow asked her for $300,000, purportedly to help finance a movie about his redemption story.

On January 22,2014, Barry Minkow pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and to defraud the federal government.

Barry Minkow admitted to embezzling over $3 million in donations to Community Bible Church from 2001 to 2011.

Barry Minkow opened unauthorized bank accounts purportedly on the church's behalf, forged signatures on church checks, diverted money from legitimate church accounts for his personal use, and charged unauthorized personal expenses on church credit cards.

Barry Minkow concealed $890,000 of income and $250,000 in taxes from the IRS.

The film, featuring Mark Hamill, Justin Baldoni, Talia Shire and Ving Rhames, was partially funded by donations Barry Minkow solicited from his congregation.

Barry Minkow insisted on playing the middle-aged version of himself in the film.

The series explored how Barry Minkow could reinvent himself and get rich several different times.

The miniseries was produced by The Content Group, with Pamela Deutsch serving as executive producer for Discovery+, and has Barry Minkow himself recounting his past, his crimes and the process of reinventing himself.