Warning to Business: We require better education for accountants and auditors, more independent audits, and better barriers to white-collar crime

I recently told five audiences in Bowling Green, Ohio and Toledo, Ohio that white collar crime can be just as brutal as violent crime.

White collar crime inflicts a collective harm on society that does not affect only the companies that were defrauded. It affects the integrity of our financial markets, raises the cost of capital and debt, causes unemployment, and is a cancer on capitalism.

Michael Chertoff who prosecuted the Crazy Eddie criminal case called Eddie Antar the "Darth Vader of Capitalism." White collar criminals are economic predators and are the scum of our free market capitalist economic system.

An article entitled, “In BGSU talk, 'Crazy Eddie' figure backs better audits” written by Homer Brickey in the Toledo Blade published on October 5, 2006 said in part:

This week Antar is telling four Toledo-area audiences the business world needs better education for accountants and auditors, more independent audits, and better barriers to white-collar crime. The four-year-old Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intended to clean up corporate fraud, is just a beginning, he said.

"Our capitalistic system depends on the integrity of financial information," Antar told a classroom of graduate accounting students at Bowling Green State University yesterday. But, he cautioned them: "The word 'trust' is no longer in the dictionary. [For you] it's a professional hazard."

And he warned them they'd better be prepared to detect frauds committed by "the scum of the scum, like me."

Antar, 49, former chief financial officer of electronics-retailer Crazy Eddie and now a convicted felon, told The Blade, "The entire [accounting] profession is not being properly trained to detect white-collar crime."

Fewer than a third of 1,000 colleges offering accounting majors have fraud-detection courses, although BGSU does, and too few students are required to take the ones that are offered, he said. He planned to encourage members of the area chapter of Financial Executives International to go beyond requirements in Sarbanes-Oxley, imposing more stringent internal controls to ensure that no more disasters like Enron and WorldCom occur.

Asbury Park Press Article One of the Antar's still talks about fraud at Crazy Eddie - Sam E. Antar now spreads the word about white collar crime

An Article entitled “One of the Antars still talks about fraud at Crazy Eddie - Sam E. Antar now spreads the word about white-collar crime” written by Michael L. Diamond for the Asbury Park Press on September 24, 2006 reported about a recent presentation I gave to the New Jersey Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. It accurately stated:

"The Antar empire was crumbling and the government was moving in for the kill when Sam E. Antar, the chief financial officer for Crazy Eddie consumer electronics chain, decided it was time to cooperate.

There was no sudden enlightenment, no overwhelming remorse. Antar just didn't want to go to prison.

"I didn't find God on the footsteps of the courthouse," Antar said. "I did the cowardly thing. I went to the U.S. government and said, "I don't want to go to jail for 30 years.' "

However, another part of my decision was not published and also clearly must be understood. I decided to cooperate (yes, for the reasons above) only after I found out that my Uncle Sam M. Antar and his children (Mitchell and Allen) were trying to set Eddie and I up to take the blame for the Crazy Eddie fraud.

After finding out from me that his own father and brothers were laying the blame on us, Eddie told me, "You are on your own" and eventually skipped town.

Abandoned by Eddie and being set up by his family I was left with no other choice.