Inside The Mind Of A Financial Criminal : Planet Money The family behind Crazy Eddie, the electronics store, ran a massive fraud for years. Eddie's cousin Sam Antar, tells us how they did it and why it worked for so long.

Inside The Mind Of A Financial Criminal

Inside The Mind Of A Financial Criminal

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Crazy Eddie Stock Certificate Sam Antar/Sam Antar hide caption

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Sam Antar/Sam Antar

A Crazy Eddie stock certificate: evidence in one of the largest securities fraud of all time.

Sam Antar/Sam Antar

In the seventies and eighties, the Antar family ran Crazy Eddie, a popular electronics chain known for its frenetic commercials.

The business was crooked from the start, but the fraud got more serious when the family took the company public in the 1984. In 1987, the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the family and discovered years of inflated profits and overstated income.

On today's show, one of the masterminds of the fraud, Eddie's cousin Sam Antar, explains how they did it and why it worked for so long.

Subscribe to the podcast. Music: LL Cool J's "I Can't Live Without My Radio." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook. Note: Today's podcast originally aired in August, 2009.

Note: The guy in the commercial is a radio DJ who played no part in the criminal case.

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