Word: karafin
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...reasons are in the current issue of Philadelphia, one of the glossy, city-centered magazines that are now catching on across the U.S. (TIME, Dec. 24, 1965). Digging just as hard as Karafin, Philadelphia Writers Gaeton Fonzi and Greg Walter began by investigating a racket involving fly-by-night companies that bought retail items on credit, unloaded them fast at discount prices, and then went into bankruptcy. The trail led to the doorstep of a 600-lb. operator named Sylvan Scolnick. Arrested, prosecuted and convicted, Scolnick started singing. Karafin, said Scolnick, was a good friend, so good, in fact, that...
Doing Well. This helped explain how Karafin, on an $11,000 Inquirer salary, could wheel around town in a pair of expensive Buicks, live in a house worth $45,000, buy $20,000 worth of furniture, and install such extras as central air conditioning and a custom-built staircase. And deck his wife in furs and jewelry, and vacation in Europe and Puerto Rico, and dabble in the stock market. But it was only part of the explanation. Philadelphia's reporters also discovered that Karafin was doing very well in a public relations sideline of investigative reporting...
...usually cheap and shoddy, got done and the fast-buck men sold the credit agreement at a discount to a broker, commercial finance firm or a bank. If too many angry and defrauded homeowners threatened, the company simply folded. It was a business particularly vulnerable to bad publicity, and Karafin and Scolnick said so to one of its practitioners, Joe Py. Public Relations Man Karafin, they said, could help Py. He had a lot of friends and could provide valuable advice, especially since the Pennsylvania State Banking Department and the Philadelphia district attorney's office were looking into...
While he was thinking, a Karafin story appeared in the Inquirer under an eight-column headline, warning Philadelphians that house-repair frauds were spreading. "High pressure salesmen" were preying on "unwary home owners." A spokesman for the Better Business Bureau was quoted as saying that "the only way to stop this racket is to expose it." Scolnick and Karafin again dropped around to see Py, found him convinced. Py wrote two checks, one for $3,000 and another for $2,000. Thereafter, Karafin stopped by Py's office every Monday morning for a regular retainer check. Over the next...
Trail of Checks. In 1962, Philadelphia's city controller stopped payments to the Broadway Maintenance Co., which serviced the city's lights and parking meters, charging negligence, destruction of records, padding of bills and payoffs to city officials. Reporter Karafin raked no muck this time. Instead, he came to Broadway's defense, accusing the controller of making wild charges, praising the company for its "good maintenance program." Eventually a judge ordered the controller to stop blocking payments to Broadway, and the firm received a new $800,000-a-year contract from the city. All the time Harry...