Gary Weiss - Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie

Crazy Eddie was one of the most brazen, longest-running frauds in history. For twenty years, the criminal mastermind Eddie Antar fooled everyone he came into contact with, from Wall Street masters of the universe, to the government, the media and the people who came into his stores. Eddie went no higher than junior high schoolthe first of his many crimes was truancybut that did not hamper him. He was as brilliant as he was dishonest. As detailed in this enthralling book, Crazy Eddie was a merchandising phenomenon as well as a world-class con game. Eddie might have been a successful businessman had he not sought the American Dream through crime.

Retail Gangster ties together all the strands of the Crazy Eddie story in an immensely readable and enjoyable narrative, filled with fascinating characters, astounding subplots, and more plot twists than a pretzel.

Frank W. Abagnale, New York Times bestselling author of Catch Me If You Can

An absorbing and revealing treatise on the underbelly of the American Dream, where scam artists and businessmen are one and the same, and the fruits of their laborin this case an iconic ad campaign once familiar to all New Yorkerswas the by-product of criminal chutzpah and greed. Retail Gangster will turn you inside out and have you reading late into the night.

T. J. English, author of Dangerous Rhythms, Havana Nocturne, and The Savage City

A hi-fidelity dive into the complex and contradictory world of a kid who rode the American Dream from immigrant Brooklyn to the coveted throne of New York discount electronicsand then to prison. A deeply reported and sensitive snapshot of the retail legend known as Crazy Eddie, and of the place that lifted him up and brought him down.

Matti Friedman, author of Who By Fire and The Aleppo Codex

This would be a remarkable work of fiction, except this tale of one mans audacious addiction to fraud is true. Retail Gangster is destined to go down as a classic in the annals of public-company fraud. With his history of tracking gangsters, there was nobody better to tell that story than Gary Weiss.

Herb Greenberg, veteran financial journalist and commentator

What a romp! With clarity and riveting detail, Weiss describes the rise and fall of a retail legend, and does it with the panache of Crazy Eddie himselfbut without the lies. Rarely has accounting fraud been examined with such wit and energy. Add what may be the most insanely dysfunctional clan to ever operate a family business, and you have a thoroughly entertaining tale!

Diana B. Henriques, New York Times bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies and A First-Class Catastrophe

Gary Weiss tackles the riveting saga of retailing huckster and shameless fraudster Crazy Eddie with verve and panache. The result is a compelling yarn of a guy who embraced every crooked scheme he encountered, and snookered loyal employees, family, consumers, and investors indiscriminately and with zero remorse. Its far more entertaining than any cautionary tale deserves to be!

Suzanne McGee, author of Chasing Goldman Sachs

For those of us who lived in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, Crazy Eddie was part of the citys unique DNA. I lived three blocks from the discount chains East 57th Street flagship store and it had a magnetic lure for all things electronic. I closely followed the news reports of the chains rise and fall. It was not until I read Gary Weisss extensively reported and wonderfully written Retail Gangster that I realized how little I knew. Relying on fresh interviews and new information he discovered in massive court filings, Weiss has delivered a page-turning tale that reveals the dysfunctional family saga behind one of the eras most fabled criminal scams. The rags to riches story of the Antar family also provides a vivid and gripping account of the players in New Yorks wild merger and acquisition frenzy and booming stock market. Weiss delivers a real-life version of Succession meets Bernie Madoff.

Gerald Posner, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Pharma, Gods Banker, and Secrets of the Kingdom

Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street

Wall Street Versus America: A Muckraking Look at the Thieves, Fakers, and Charlatans Who Are Ripping You Off

Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for Americas Soul

For the victims

E ARLY IN J ANUARY 1987, THREE MEN OF MODEST STATURE , WEARING TAILORED suits and long black overcoats, arrived at a five-story town house on East Sixty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. This was the heart of the Gold Coast, which stretched a mile up Fifth Avenue from Fifty-Ninth Street and east for two blocks, a neighborhood (if one could call it that) unique in the city for its ostentatious embrace of unapologetic greed and the good fortune that comes from careful selection of parents. No. 15 was designed in 1904 by Ernest Flagg, a noted architect of the period, as the residence of a well-born man of leisure and occasional biplane pilot named Cortlandt Field Bishop. It was derivative in appearance, with faux Parisian balconies and other frills that were fashionable at the time. Many of the residences in this area had been converted into consulates and private clubs over the years. This one was now the Regency Whist Club. Wealthy men played an obscure card game here, and occasionally they invited for lunch people they wanted to impress.