Minkow Defense Outlined: ‘Prisoner’ of Mob
The attorney for ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning entrepreneur Barry Minkow told a Los Angeles federal judge Monday he will argue that his client was a virtual prisoner of individuals with ties to organized crime and that he was helpless while the mobsters used the firm to make illegal profits.
“Barry Minkow simply had no alternative once the die was cast . . . ,” defense attorney David Kenner told U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian during a pretrial hearing. “(Minkow) was simply not able to remove himself from the threats and the intimidation.”
Kenner said this was the “duress” defense that he will present during what is expected to be a lengthy jury trial scheduled to begin Aug. 23.
Later, he underscored to reporters that by the time his 22-year-old client discovered that his business had been turned into a multimillion-dollar stock scam, “Barry was a prisoner . . . there was no escape.”
Responding to Kenner’s strategy, Tevrizian observed that a duress defense is usually an admission “that the defendant committed the crime.”
Federal prosecutors took sharp exception to the defense plan.
“We’ll show that this kid wasn’t a helpless babe in the woods,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Gordon A. Greenberg told reporters outside court.
Although prosecutors said they were made aware of the duress maneuver about a month ago, Kenner has essentially been hammering on this theme for more than three months. At a March news conference, for example, the lawyer said Minkow “was turned into a victim and manipulated for the financial benefit of others.”
So far, prosecutors have obtained guilty pleas from six of the 12 people facing federal charges stemming from the inflation of sales figures for ZZZZ Best in a scheme that made the company’s stock a darling of Wall Street. Two other defendants are expected to plead guilty shortly.
In pleading guilty, several former top officials of ZZZZ Best identified Minkow as the architect of the fraud.
Minkow is being held in a maximum-security cell at Terminal Island Federal Prison, unable to make $1.5 million bail.
At Monday’s hearing, designed to lay down ground rules on what evidence will be available to his attorneys, Minkow, dressed in blue prison fatigues, busily took notes at the defense lawyers’ table. From time to time, he would smile or frown when the judge announced a decision on what evidence could be scrutinized by his lawyers.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Atty. James Asperger, told the court that a new federal grand jury indictment will soon be issued against the remaining four defendants. He said the indictment will contain some new charges against Minkow, but he did not elaborate.
