SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man who went from teenage millionaire to
convicted con artist to professional fraud fighter and pastor was
convicted Wednesday of cheating his San Diego church congregation out of
some $3 million.
Barry Minkow pleaded guilty to embezzling funds
from the San Diego Community Bible Church, a U.S. attorney’s statement
said. He was already serving a five-year sentence for a securities fraud
conviction in Florida and could get five additional years when he is
sentenced for the new conviction April 7.
Under the plea, Minkow
admitted that he opened unauthorized church bank accounts, forged
signatures on checks and used member donations for personal benefit.
"Barry
Minkow is again convicted of fraud, this time for stealing money from
the parishioners of San Diego Community Bible Church," U.S. Attorney
Laura Duffy said. "We stand vigilant against those who cheat and steal
without regard to the consequences wrought on their victims and their
communities."
Minkow gained national attention as a teenager in
the 1980s by founding the ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning company in Southern
California. At age 21, he became the youngest person at the time in U.S.
history to take a company public, and he became very wealthy on paper.
But
ZZZZ Best turned out to be involved in a fraud scheme in which
investors poured $100 million into fake fire and water restoration
projects. And in 1988, Minkow was sentenced to 25 years in prison after
being convicted of 57 fraud charges.
He was released in 1995.
Minkow became pastor of the San Diego church two years later, after
undergoing a religious conversion in prison.
He also founded the
Fraud Discovery Institute, which helped the FBI and other law
enforcement agencies ferret out white-collar crimes around the country.
But
even while working with the institute, he was engaged in manipulating
the stock prices of the companies he was investigating, federal
prosecutors said.
In 2011 in Miami, a federal judge sentenced
Minkow to five years in prison for involvement in a scam that cost
homebuilder Lennar Corp. some $580 million in lost stock value.
The
judge, Patricia Seitz, said at the time that Minkow was a "very gifted
person," but he had "no moral compass that says ‘stop.’"
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