Local News in Brief : Tape of Minkow’s Giving Orders Played

Prosecutors at the trial of entrepreneur Barry Minkow, who alleges that mobsters forced him to commit fraud at his Reseda-based ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning company, on Friday played the jury a tape of a conversation in which he gives orders to one of the men he says controlled him.

In a recorded telephone call of Oct. 23, 1987, played in federal court in Los Angeles, Minkow reassures Daniel Krowpman, a former ZZZZ Best board member, that he does not need to worry about a criminal investigation of the company.

Krowpman pleaded guilty March 10 to securities fraud, bank fraud and tax charges in the case.

Lawyers for Minkow, who is charged with engineering an elaborate hoax to raise millions of dollars through bank loans and stock offerings, have portrayed him as a victim of mobsters who took advantage of him and his firm to line their own pockets.

But U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian, who is presiding over the trial, told prosecutors and defense lawyers, while the jury was out of the courtroom, that the tape is “devastating” to Minkow’s argument that he was controlled by others.