Zzzz Best Co

Founder Barry Minkow, the 21-year-old one-time whiz kid, isn't the only one who has become embroiled in the controversy surrounding ZZZZ Best Co. Add to the list a former employee of Travelers Insurance Cos. and a former UCLA football player. Both were named along with Minkow in a $25-million lawsuit filed Monday by ZZZZ Best Co. alleging theft and fraud.

Only days after its stock surged in the wake of an upbeat earnings projection, shares of ZZZZ Best Co. of Reseda tumbled again Monday after the carpet cleaning firm said it had mutually agreed to part with the investment firm which had been advising it on a major acquisition.

The Supreme Court, ruling in a case that grew out of the financial collapse of Barry Minkow's phony carpet-cleaning business, said Wednesday that banks and other lenders are entitled to keep recent interest payments from a bankrupt company, rather than turn them back to a bankruptcy trustee. The 9-0 ruling is a victory for lenders and a setback for the remaining creditors of a bankrupt firm, although the actual amount of money involved in the ZZZZ Best Co. case is relatively small.

Three years after the collapse of fraudulent ZZZZ Best Co., the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday filed a civil suit against its founder, Barry J. Minkow, and 13 others. The 82-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accuses the defendants of violating securities laws in connection with a $15-million ZZZZ Best stock offering in 1986. Minkow founded ZZZZ Best in his parents' Reseda garage when he was just 16 years old.

Federal prosecutors Friday unsealed a 54-count racketeering and fraud indictment accusing millionaire whiz kid Barry Minkow of staging an elaborate securities hoax to prop up his carpet-cleaning company while bleeding it nearly dry of money, some of it laundered through Las Vegas casinos.

State investigators have moved to revoke the liquor license of the stylish Malibu restaurant Splash--named by police as a target of a money-laundering investigation involving the scandal-ridden ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning firm.

Barry Minkow, the 21-year-old "whiz kid" entrepreneur, has resigned as president of ZZZZ Best Co., the carpet-cleaning firm he founded, his personal attorney said Thursday. Lawyer Arthur H. Barens said Minkow told him in a phone conversation Thursday morning that Minkow resigned for unspecified "health reasons." Minkow did not return a reporter's phone calls. ZZZZ Best, based in Reseda, made no statement regarding Minkow. Bruce T.

An insurance appraiser who befriended Barry Minkow in a gym and went on to help him build his ill-fated ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning empire was sentenced Monday to eight years in prison by a Los Angeles judge who said there is "too much flimflam" in the investment world. Thomas G.

Fallen carpet-cleaning mogul Barry Minkow was portrayed on Tuesday as a consummate swindler driven by insatiable greed and a limitless ego and not--as Minkow has insisted--a vulnerable young man intimidated by mobsters into a life of crime. The 22-year-old Minkow, Assistant U.S. Atty. Gordon A. Greenberg told a Los Angeles federal court jury, "is a natural predator. . . . (Minkow) knows how to manipulate people and he does it well. . . .