Crazy Eddie, Fraud Mother?
Corporate Gossip
Becca Platsky
5.0 • 590 Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2024
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
NO ONE does fraud like Eddie Antar, and Crazy Eddie is the bizarre story that got Becca hooked on fraud!
Adam, Becca, and their Dad Jeff pop a few ludes and drop down the rabbit hole into a 1970's New York City punk rock fever dream. They meet a young Eddie Antar scamming tourists in a seedy Time Square clip joint and follow his journey to become the eccentric millionaire founder of Crazy Eddie Electronics. Antar was a marketing genius, and by the mid 1980's commercials for the chain were inescapable, shoppers were practically screamed at to rush out to Crazy Eddie's because 'HIS PRICES ARE INSANE!!!!'
The insane prices, of course, were facilitated by an elaborate criminal racket. Money laundering, insurance fraud, tax evasion, bribery, insider trading… Eddie Antar did it all! But when the cash begins to dry up, Eddie's increasingly desperate and brazen behavior puts him in the crosshairs of the SEC. That's when Eddie Antar became an international fugitive and left his family, who enabled and benefited from his behavior, holding the bag.
Links:
Read Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie
Crazy Eddie commercial from 1982
Remembering Crazy Eddie: His Prices Were Insane
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | New York City. |
| 0:02.8 | Are you ready to ring in 1984? |
| 0:05.2 | I'm Rick Rockwell, and you're listening to all the New Year's champ until the ball drops. |
| 0:10.7 | If 1983 was your year, then cheers to you. |
| 0:13.7 | But if not, well, here's hope that next year will be. |
| 0:19.0 | Cheers. |
| 0:20.5 | Eddie Antar hoisted his Budweiser in the air, though you wouldn't hear a clink. |
| 0:26.1 | Antar was alone in the back of a stretch limo on the corner of 80th Street and First Avenue, |
| 0:31.0 | waiting outside the home of his girlfriend, a pretty young blonde named Debbie. |
| 0:36.1 | Eddie cracked another beer. |
| 0:39.0 | What was taking so long? |
| 0:40.1 | It was time to party. |
| 0:42.1 | There was so much to celebrate. |
| 0:44.1 | Eddie's namesake company, |
| 0:46.6 | the electronics retailer called Crazy Eddies, |
| 0:50.0 | was getting ready to debut on the New York Stock Exchange, and Eddie was about to be a millionaire, |
| 0:53.1 | along with most of his family who worked for the chain. |
| 0:56.5 | He was living a 1980s boss boy fever dream. |
| 1:01.1 | His name was in every business magazine. |
| 1:03.4 | Analysts were praising his unique strategies, his endless expanding revenues, and his viral marketing campaigns. |
| 1:10.1 | That year, a poll would show that 99% of |
| 1:13.3 | New Yorkers knew about Crazy Eddies. The store had better name recognition than Ronald Reagan. |
... |
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