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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

This must be the best content marketing I ever read. The author is the convicted felon being written about and he now runs a forensic accounting consultancy.

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Amusingly, the forensic accounting consultancy and the content marketing are just elements of another, longer con.

https://www.deepcapture.com/tag/sam-antar/

https://www.deepcapture.com/2011/03/judge-gill-freeman-throw...

I have a very hard time getting through those stories, the writing is horrendous. Antar sure is a better writer than the person trying to expose him. What is laryngitis and why is Sam Antar a bad person for having it?

If you could spare the time for a tl;dr I'd be interested :)

It's not really laryngitis.

"Sam Antar, generally not short of opinion, has suddenly developed laryngitis."

That's a metaphor. It means that Antar is suddenly not talking when the subject changes to Barry Minkow, and the author's opinion is that this is because they are or were in a criminal conspiracy.

I figured as much. My complaint is that I have to read up on some obscure disease as well as a certain Barry Minkow just to start getting an idea of why/how Sam Altar is still running cons.

But yeah, fair enough, maybe that's what I should've written then :)

In USA English, laryngitis is a common word.

Ah right, thanks. I didn't know that so obviously my attempt at humour came off as stupid :)

> some obscure disease

I don't know whether to bemoan the decline of literary education in recent years, or applaud the improvments in medical treatments…

This is not uncommon. This is taking tradecraft and applying it in a useful and valuable way (for society as a whole). Frank Abagnale is one such example.

American security consultant known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, and impostor between the ages of 15 and 21.

Abagnale also continues to advise the FBI, with whom he has associated for over 40 years, by teaching at the FBI Academy and lecturing for FBI field offices throughout the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/

Kevin Mitnick

Barry Minkow (except he couldn't seem to give up his old ways and is in prison again)

I think often what attracts these people, beyond getting a certain level of wealth, is the game and the high from knowing they are better than those they go up against.

Switching sides allows them to continue the game and often even continue with a good base level of wealth. This can be hard to do without an existing reputation, but their prior career should have already achieved that.

This is his cousin, Sam, the CFO. "Eddie" himself got convicted by testimony from Sam.

According to Sam's own writing, Eddie might've been the main motivating force of it all, but Sam architected all the details of the fraud.

You are correct, from the start page of https://whitecollarfraud.com/ :

Sam Antar is a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the CFO of Crazy Eddie, Mr. Antar helped mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980s.

Today, Sam Antar is a forensic accountant. His primary work focuses on identifying and investigating public companies engaged in securities fraud by performing an in-depth (deep-dive) forensic analysis. (...)

Sam also took a plea deal; he is also a felon (but a very nice one from all accounts).

If by "very nice" you mean "stole millions and largely got away with it (and admits as much)" then yes.

This is one of the grey areas of the US criminal justice system that deeply worries me. By his own account, he willingly participated in a huge accounting fraud, in fact, he seems to have originated some of the most ingenious schemes to turn a regular crooked small private company, into a public one, defrauding many "small" investors along the way. And yet, he was let go (although at least he IS a convicted felon).

All this while thousands of Americans languish in jail/prison for nonviolent drug charges.

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