Zzzz Best Co

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.

ZZZZ Best founder Barry Minkow, serving a 25-year prison term for fraud, was ordered Friday to pay Union Bank a $7-million loan he took out on his now-defunct carpet-cleaning business. At the prosecutor's request, Superior Court Judge Sally G. Disco also will consider ordering Minkow, 24, to pay $14 million in damages under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The bank sued Minkow last year over the 1986 loan.

A federal judge in Los Angeles threw out a lawsuit Monday by a former ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning financial consultant who accused police of illegally searching his Encino home and falsely branding him a suspected money launderer. Maurice Rind, 50, who was a consultant to the San Fernando Valley company owned by Barry Minkow, sued the Los Angeles Police Department, Chief Daryl F. Gates and three detectives for $15 million after the July 8, 1987, search of his house.

An attorney for the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control argued Monday that the liquor license for the Malibu restaurant Splash should be revoked because the popular hangout for show business personalities is secretly controlled by two San Fernando Valley businessmen with criminal records. "We know the people involved are dirty," attorney David B. Wainstein told an ABC license hearing in Los Angeles conducted by Administrative Law Judge William F. Byrnes.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a former ZZZZ Best Co. official to disgorge profits and pay damages totaling nearly $900,000 stemming from insider trading violations while at the now-defunct carpet cleaning firm. Jack N. Polevoi of Woodland Hills, who pleaded guilty in June to four counts of stock and tax fraud and other violations and is serving an 18-month prison sentence, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Robert J.

To look at them, nobody would have thought they could do it: An insurance adjuster who couldn't seem to hold down a job. A family man who ran a small janitorial business. A former UCLA linebacker who taught himself accounting. And the kid with the big mouth and an overdose of charm.

Barry Minkow, who started the ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning company in his parents' garage and turned it into a fraudulent $100-million empire, was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison after admitting he had "enjoyed being a little Mafioso." "Today is a great day for this country. The system works. . . . They got the right guy," Minkow, 23, said in a spirited speech to the judge that suggested the days when his fast-talking charm and ability to inspire people made him a millionaire.

Barry Minkow was a "compulsive debtor" who had an uncontrollable need for millions of dollars the way a drug addict needs a fix, his defense lawyer said Friday. In a report filed for his sentencing Monday on 57 fraud counts stemming from the 1987 collapse of his ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning company, lawyers for Minkow recanted the young entrepreneur's defense that the mob forced him into committing the fraud and said Minkow was the victim of an unhappy childhood.