SCAMBUSTER INC.

摘要

Roomful of agents was waiting expectantly at the FBI'S principal training facility at Quantico, Va., when a wiry, intense man stepped to the microphone. Point-ing to a video camera recording the session, he tried to break the ice. "I notice you guys are videotaping me," he deadpanned. "And I want to thank the FBI, because this is the first time you have let me know in advance that the recorders were on." Count Barry Minkow as one of the more unlikely people ever to be a law-enforcement lecturer. A felon, he was busted in his early 20s by the FBI for engineering one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history. His ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning scam, a mid-1980s securities caper, was worth $300 million before it went up in smoke. That rap landed him in a federal pen on a 25-year sentence. After serving seven years and four months, he got out in 1995 and, like the con man portrayed in the hit movie Catch Me If You Can, he started helping the feds. "Three weeks out of jail, my arresting officer extended an invitation to speak at an FBI conference on bank fraud," recalls Minkow, 38.