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A business associate of ZZZZ Best founder Barry Minkow pleaded guilty Wednesday to stock fraud and admitted helping the whiz kid entrepreneur launder funds stolen from the Reseda carpet-cleaning company. Jerry Polevoi, 41, of Woodland Hills, was the eighth man to plead guilty in a securities fraud case stemming from the July, 1987, collapse of ZZZZ Best. Minkow, 22, and three other men face trial Aug.

As Barry Minkow prepared to be sentenced a second time for securities fraud, he appeared in a familiar role: repentant, apologetic, acknowledging deep character flaws and expressing hope he can transform himself for the better yet again. "The truth about me is I am a 45-year-old loser, and I am so very sorry for what I have done," Minkow wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz of Miami, who was to sentence him early Thursday for conspiring to manipulate the stock of home builder Lennar Corp.

A Los Angeles man pleaded guilty Wednesday to laundering more than $300,000 that ZZZZ Best owner Barry Minkow is accused of stealing from his carpet-cleaning company in a massive fraud scheme. Minkow, 21, and 10 associates were indicted in January on racketeering, money laundering, and fraud charges in an alleged scheme to inflate the worth of ZZZZ Best, which Minkow founded in his parents' garage and turned into a $200-million company.

Barry Minkow, a 1980s teen tycoon from Reseda whose ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning firm turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, resigned as minister at a San Diego County church and intends to plead guilty to a charge of insider trading, according his attorney. The charge stems from a federal investigation in Florida involving a business, the Fraud Discovery Institute, that Minkow set up while guiding Community Bible Church in Mira Mesa. His idea was to reveal corporate fraud while holding short positions in the companies he exposed, allowing him to profit on declines in stock prices.

Has the reverent Los Angeles Times stooped to the category of the weekly tabloids? My reference is to the recent story in the Business section citing questionable activities of ZZZZ Best Co., which occurred more than two years ago ("Behind 'Whiz Kid' Is a Trail of False Credit Card Billings," May 22). Barry Minkow, founder and chief executive of ZZZZ Best, has admitted to his past poor judgment in selecting subcontractors. Overcharges were repaid, and ZZZZ Best absorbed the losses.

James D. Richman said he charged $100 worth of carpet cleaning while living in Santa Monica, but he got billed for $1,790 on his Visa card statement. Barbara Lee of Westminster paid by check but wrote her Visa number on top. Sure enough, she said, her Visa card was billed for more than $1,600. Then there was Lucille Frost of Santa Ana. She was slapped with $1,389.50 in Visa charges and $1,710.57 in Mastercard charges--all for $75 worth of carpet cleaning. What do these people have in common?

Congratulations to Kim Murphy on a mesmerizing article on Minkow. It was novel quality! This article should serve to caution ZZZZ Best investors: Don't throw in the towel just yet! While Barry's bubble may have burst, there are potential globules of gas rising from the saga of Tom and Debbie, aided by Mark Morze, the Amazing Mathematician, and the good services of the butler brothers, Jack and Jerry Polevoi. Now those are the big, unbreakable, bankable bubbles of a successful daytime soap!

What is the basis of your morbid and extraordinary fascination with Barry Minkow and ZZZZ Best? For an endless period of time, predating the ZZZZ Best mini-scandal, various sections of The Times devoted so much space to the Wunderkind and his carpet-cleaning company that he could have dropped his abysmal commercials. Are there no young Americans left deserving your praise now that the mighty moneymaker of this generation has fallen from grace? Must we now be subjected to letters from friends of Minkow (Letters, June 14)

A Van Nuys judge on Monday decided the Los Angeles County district attorney's office will prosecute a producer-director who alleged a conflict of interest involving a deputy district attorney. Dirk Wayne Summers faces 22 charges in five cases. They include grand theft, fraudulent use of credit cards, passing bad checks and forgery. One of the charges against him alleges he used someone's credit card in 1986 to charter a jet. Summers' attorney, James H.

A stockbroker refused to testify Wednesday in the Barry Minkow securities fraud trial, claiming that he was threatened in the courthouse hallway by a suspected organized crime figure who made "menacing gestures" at him and said, "We'll have our day . . . in court." Donald A.

The independent drama "XX/XY" opens with the sort of hot stuff for which Penthouse Forum and French movies were invented. After crashing a party, a fledgling animator named Coles (Mark Ruffalo) lands in bed with two of Sarah Lawrence's finest. The object of his lust is Sam (Maya Stange), one of those girls with melting eyes whom men pursue like heat-seeking missiles, while the object of his opportunism is her best friend, the querulous Thea (Kathleen Robertson).

When it comes to night life, Los Angeles is no New York. This city is a bit more into getting its beauty sleep. (Angelenos don't get to hibernate in the winter as do East Coasters.) But nights aren't totally dead out here. Looking for late-night L.A.? Check out www.lanocturne.com. Under the headings Swing, Food, Books, Movies and Post Cards, the site offers a glimpse of activities from real to reel.

This is how 17-year-old Natalie Kepes starts every school day: 6:30 a.m., buzzzzzzz goes the alarm clock--and slam goes her hand on the snooze button. Buzzzzz, slam. Buzzzzz, slam. Then . . . 7 a.m.? Yikes! No more snoozing. She gets dressed, grabs something to eat and makes a mad dash to El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. But she's still not really awake when class starts at, ugh, 8 a.m. Maybe her first-period teacher will let her doze a few minutes. Maybe . . . not.

Barry Minkow, 30, was voted class clown by his graduating class at Cleveland High School in Reseda. In 1987 he proved that he deserved it, after his Reseda company, ZZZZ Best, collapsed like a house of cards. Minkow and his associates hoodwinked Wall Street firms, investors, accountants and lawyers through an elaborate series of cover-ups into believing that his company had won multimillion-dollar damage- cleanup contracts.

Pacing up and down the aisles like a talk-show host, Barry Minkow exhorts his audience of accountants to stop cozying up to their corporate clients. "You're perceived as the corporate cop," he tells them. But auditors aren't doing their job, he says, if they let someone like him create 20,000 phony documents and then sweet-talk them out of checking his records properly. "When the auditor comes in, he's ready to fight," Minkow says as he jumps into a boxing stance.

Barry Minkow, once the FBI poster boy for fraud, teased the audience at an FBI-sponsored seminar Thursday in Santa Monica about being as stodgy as, well, bank executives. Which is what they were, 400 strong. Minkow paced and punched the air, half comic, half revival preacher. He told of convincing banks that he was a teen-age business genius.

The products: Over the years, inventors have patented hundreds of gadgets to combat snoring. If necessity breeds invention, it's safe to say that lots of people desperately need a quiet night's sleep. The National Sleep Foundation estimates that 37 million Americans snore habitually, which translates to millions of bleary-eyed partners and probably billions of nights spent on the couch.

On a spring evening in this Mississippi town, Jim Walker dug into a plate of roast beef, macaroni and cheese, and green beans at the Palmer Home for Children and tried to swallow his frustration. The orphanage was hosting an awards dinner for 65 of its charges — some in high chairs, others in high school. The kids, who wore Easter dresses and secondhand ties, accepted prizes for spiritual growth and certificates for artistic excellence. A 22-year-old who arrived at Palmer Home at 8 months old and graduated from the University of Mississippi received a top honor.

Barry Minkow, the former ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning whiz convicted of swindling investors out of more than $26 million, ended seven years in custody Wednesday with a bus ride from the federal prison in Lompoc to a halfway house in Echo Park. Minkow was released after serving less than one-third of his 25-year term because of good behavior. He will remain at the halfway house until April 12, when he is due to be set free on parole, said Monica Wetzel, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons.

Barry Minkow, the San Fernando Valley entrepreneur who made millions with the carpet-cleaning company he founded in his parents' garage before being exposed as a fraud, was scheduled to be transferred from a federal prison today to a halfway house after serving more than five years of his sentence, his lawyer and prison officials said Tuesday. Minkow, 28, will be moved from the Lompoc Federal Prison Camp and sent to a halfway house in North Hollywood, said Randy M. Long, a Reedley, Calif.