Our conversation with Sammy Antar, the former chief financial officer of Crazy Eddie, Inc., and self-confessed possessor of a criminal mind, is so far-ranging that we are sharing it with our web readers in installments.
In today's installment, Sammy explores the nature of Bernard Madoff's criminality while continuing to burnish his own credentials as an unrepentant bad guy.
"Was Bernie Madoff category one, like me, or [the less sinister seeming] category two? My guess is that he is probably category two," Sammy says. "We all live with criminal temptation every day: some people jaywalk. Of course, I'm not equating that with a large crime, but we all have our levels of temptation. Some of them don't rise to the level of criminality, as they do for me."
Now Sammy, who an hour ago ran ahead of us as we entered the coffee shop, excusing his gaffe by saying, "I'm hyper," and immediately on sitting down at our table downed a cup of Java, summons a waiter, politely asks for a refill, and continues his assessment of the Ponzi King: "I don't think Madoff started out to be a criminal," he theorizes. "I believe that he succumbed to temptation. He may have had a bad quarter or had borrowed from one person to pay the other."
Madoff's success at convincing seemingly savvy movers and shakers to invest with him:
"Madoff increased the comfort level by building a wall of false integrity around him. How did he do it? He donated to charities; he was a fiduciary to these charities by managing their money; he was even on the board of NASD. As a criminal, I did these sorts of things too."
All in the family:
"Look at why Madoff was successful. Madoff and his people shared common backgrounds, religion, and family loyalty, as do the Russian Mob, the Mafia, and our family of Crazy Eddie's. Those are the cohesive groups--the toughest groups to crack. I'm not saying the other family members were involved, but it was his family's cohesiveness that enabled him to be successful for a long period of time."
The con man's appeal for the rest of us:
"Most white collar criminals are charming, likeable people; that's why we're called 'confidence men'--we gain the confidence of our victims." Then, leaning mock-menacingly toward us again, Sammy adds, "We can pick your pocket as we are talking to you."
We criminal are different:
"What you have to understand is that you are dealing with an element of society that doesn't play by your rules: we are economic predators, no different than serial killers. The only difference is that we commit our crimes with a smile while serial killers do it with weapons. The effects of our crimes are just as brutal as violent crime.
"Madoff was almost the classic white collar criminal. He didn't kill twenty or thirty people, but you have fifty billion dollars in damages: he wiped out peoples homes, their life savings; there are probably thousands of people out of work as a result of his crime. He got caught in his old age and will probaby be dead by the time he goes to jail."
Log on tomorrow for the next installment of "Dinner with Sammy," his explanation of the "Fraud Triangle," criteria developed by criminologists to better understand what makes people like Bernie Madoff--and, of course, himself, tick.