Minkow: ‘Compulsive’

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. “The true story of ZZZZ Best is of a young man almost constantly in debt, struggling to prove that he will not become the failure depicted by his father,” attorney David E. Kenner said in his report. “In Barry Minkow’s case, the hoped for ‘Big Fix’ was the infusion of new funds--funds that he could only obtain through activities that caused his prosecution.”