Richard M. Orin Ethics Symposium

Who: Sam E. Antar, Former CPA and CFO of Crazy Eddie, Inc., and convicted felon

Day/Time: Friday, March 16, 9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Location: Bush Auditorium, Cornell Hall

Topic: Sam E. Antar is a former CPA and was the CFO for Crazy Eddie, Inc., a bygone consumer electronics retail chain previously located throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. With his cousin Eddie Antar, president and CEO of Crazy Eddie, and other members of the Antar family, he became a part of one of the largest security frauds of its time. The fraud cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars in the 1980s. During the criminal and civil prosecutions, Antar was the government’s key witness against his fellow conspirators. As a result, the CEO, Eddie Antar, went to prison for more than six years and the government and various civil litigants recovered more than $75 million from him. In exchange for his cooperation, Sam Antar avoided jail time and was instead sentenced to six months of house arrest, 1,200 hours of community service, three years of probation, and had to pay $10,000 in fees and fines. In his presentations, Antar shares what he has learned from his part in the Crazy Eddie fraud. His addresses on white collar crime discuss vulnerabilities in the audit system, despite what safeguards have been put into place. Antar focuses on criminality and what motivates people to defraud others.