Word: zzzz
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...Zzzz...
...problems began last May when the Los Angeles Times published a report alleging that in 1984 and 1985, ZZZZ Best had rung up $72,000 in false credit- card charges. The paper also reported that the same thing happened a year later at a flower shop owned by ZZZZ Best's chief operating officer, this time for a total of $91,000. Minkow blamed both overcharges on unscrupulous subcontractors and an employee, and repaid all the customers...
Although his explanations were riddled with troubling contradictions, it looked as if Minkow was going to come out of the controversy relatively unscathed. Then, two weeks ago, he abruptly resigned from the company he had founded, citing unspecified health problems. Four days later, ZZZZ Best's new management filed a suit charging Minkow with several multimillion-dollar deceptions, including allegations that he had withdrawn $3 million from company accounts for his own personal use and diverted an additional $18 million in company funds to a firm owned by an associate...
...most stunning revelations, however, were those unveiled two days later by the Los Angeles police. In a dramatic midweek press conference, Chief Daryl Gates revealed a three-month investigation that had linked ZZZZ Best to the drug-profit laundering operation. As the police tell it, ZZZZ Best was probably acting as a front for organized crime figures, who would buy equipment for the company with "dirty" money and replace their investment with "clean" cash skimmed from the proceeds of the firm's legitimate business. According to Gates, the spectacular growth in revenues that led to Minkow's fame...
Shares of ZZZZ Best stock, which had traded for more than $18 a share three months ago, plummeted last week to less than $1, triggering suits by flabbergasted stockholders. One investor is reported to have lost $7 million in the debacle. But the hardest hit was Minkow. Not only had his $100 million stock holdings shrunk to less than $6 million, but his oft announced dream of making ZZZZ Best the "General Motors of carpet cleaning" was irrevocably shattered. Once lionized as an emblem of what brash youth can do, he had become, almost overnight, a symbol of where overreaching...