Crazy Eddie

Eddie Antar came from a low rent neighborhood in Brooklyn from a family of merchants. Growing up poor he had dreams and aspirations of becoming a household name. At the age of 20 years old, Antar opened up his very first store, Crazy Eddie. Crazy Eddie was an electronics store that specialized in low prices and a party atmosphere. The business did very well in its startup years and began to grow. Not long after Antar opened up his first store, he opened up another.
From the get go, Antar had the mind of fraud. He was not going to play by the rules. He started business by skimming money off of cash sales before they hit the register. The less cash he had to report, the less taxes he had to pay. With his tight knit family working for him, the skimming got to the point for every $5.00 brought in, $1 was taken out. By the time the second store was up and running, Antar had profited hundreds of thousands of dollars from skimming. He paid his family under to table cash from the money taken from these illegal profits.
Antar quickly realized the best way to make his assets larger was through inventory. Since Antar sold his products at such low costs, manufacturers started withholding shipments. He started obtaining inventory through family connections in the underground market. Antar would buy damaged or used products and repackage them to look as if they were brand new and sell them as if they were never opened.
Antar also dabbled in insurance fraud. He made many claims of floods or fires at his stores. When the insurance agent would come out to assess the damage, Antar would stack up empty boxes with water all over then or burn marks. He walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars from these claims that he pocketed and distributed to his family.
After opening a few more stores, Antar realized that it was only a matter of time until he got audited. He knew he didn’t have half the inventory he claimed he did on the books, so he paid for his cousin, Sam...