Complete Case 1.8 - Crazy Eddie, Inc It should be minimum 85% plagiarism free other wise i want money back .

The written case analysis must be 5-7 pages in length, and include 6-7 scholarly citations/references. Prepare the case analysis using APA format.

CASE 1.8: Crazy Eddie, Inc. In 1969, Eddie Antar, a 21-year-old high school dropout from Brooklyn, opened a consumer electronics store with 150 square feet of floor space in New York City1 Despite this modest beginning, Antar would eventually dominate the retail consumer electronics market in the New York City metropolitan area. By 1987, Antar's firm, Crazy Eddie, Inc., had 43 retail outlets, sales exceeding $350 million, and outstanding stock with a collective market value of $600 million. Antar personally realized more than $70 million from the sale of Crazy Eddie stock during his tenure as the company's chief executive. A classic rags-to-riches story became a spectacular business failure in the late 1980s when Crazy Eddie collapsed following allegations of extensive financial wrongdoing by Antar and his associates. Shortly after a hostile takeover of the company in November 1987, the firm's new owners discovered that Crazy Eddie's inventory was overstated by more than $65 million. This inventory shortage had been concealed from the public in registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Subsequent investigations by regulatory authorities revealed that Eddie Antar and his subordinates had grossly overstated Crazy Eddie's reported profits throughout its existence. 2 Eddie Antar: The Man Behind the Legend Eddie Antar was born into a large, closely knit Syrian family in 1947. After dropping out of high school at the age of 16, Antar began peddling television sets in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Within a few years, Antar and one of his cousins scraped together enough cash to open an electronics store near Coney Island. It was at this tiny store that Antar acquired the nickname \"Crazy Eddie.\" When a customer attempted to leave the store empty-handed, Antar would block the store's exit, sometimes locking the door until the individual agreed to buy something anything. To entice a reluctant customer to make a purchase, Antar first determined which product the customer was considering and then lowered the price until the customer finally capitulated. Antar became well known in his neighborhood not only for his unusual sales tactics but also for his unconventional, if not asocial, behavior. A bodybuilder and fitness fanatic, he typically came to work in his exercise togs, accompanied by a menacing German shepherd. His quick temper caused repeated problems with vendors, competitors, and subordinates. Antar's most distinctive trait was his inability to trust anyone outside of his large extended family. In later years, when he needed someone to serve in an executive capacity in his company, Antar nearly always tapped a familymember, although the individual seldom had the appropriate training or experience for the position. Eventually, Antar's father, sister, two brothers, uncle, brother-in-law, and several cousins would assume leadership positions with Crazy Eddie, while more than one dozen other relatives would hold minor positions with the firm. Crazy Eddie's Formula for Success In the early 1980s, sales in the consumer electronics industry exploded, doubling in the four-year period from 1981 to 1984 alone. As the public's demand for electronic products grew at an ever-increasing pace, Antar converted his Crazy Eddie stores into consumer electronics supermarkets. Antar stocked the shelves of Crazy Eddie's retail outlets with every electronic gadget he could find and with as many different brands of those products as possible. By 1987, the company featured seven product lines. Following are those product lines and their percentage contributions to Crazy Eddie's 1987 sales. Televisions 53 Audio products and systems 15 Portable and personal electronics 10 Car stereos 5 Accessories and tapes 4 Computers and games 3 Miscellaneous itemsincluding microwaves, air conditioners, and small appliances 1 Total Antar encouraged his salespeople to supplement each store's profits by pressuring customers to buy extended product warranties. Many, if not most, of the repair costs that Crazy Eddie paid under these warranties were recovered by the company from manufacturers that had issued factory warranties on the products. As a result, the company realized a 100 percent profit margin on much of its warranty revenue. As his firm grew rapidly during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Antar began extracting large price concessions from his suppliers. His ability to purchase electronic products in large quantities and at cut-rate prices enabled him to become a \"tran-shipper,\" or secondary supplier, of these goods to smaller consumer electronics retailers in the New York City area. Although manufacturers frowned on this practice and often threatened to stop selling to him, Antar continually increased the scale of his transhipping operation. The most important ingredient in Antar's marketing strategy was largescale advertising. Antar created an advertising \"umbrella\" over his company's principal retail market that included the densely populated area within a 150-mile radius of New York City. Antar blanketed this region with raucous, sometimes annoying, but always memorable radio and television commercials. 10 In 1972, Antar hired a local radio personality and part-time actor known as Doctor Jerry to serve as Crazy Eddie's advertising spokesperson. Over the 15 years that the bug-eyed Doctor Jerry hawked products for Crazy Eddie, he achieved a higher \"recognition quotient\" among the public than Ed Koch, the longtime mayor of New York City. Doctor Jerry's series of ear-piercing television commercials that featured him screaming \"Crazy EddieHis prices are insane!\" brought the company national notoriety when they were parodied by Dan Akroyd on Saturday Night Live. Crazy Eddie's discounting policy served as the focal theme of the company's advertising campaigns. The company promised to refund the difference between the selling price of a product and any lower price for that same item that a customer found within 30 days of the purchase date. Despite the advertising barrage intended to convince the public that Crazy Eddie was a deep-discounter, the company's prices on most products were in line with those of its major competitors. Customers drawn to Crazy Eddie outlets by \"advertised specials\" were routinely diverted by sales staff to higher-priced merchandise. Crazy Eddie Goes Public In 1983, Antar decided to sell stock in Crazy Eddie to raise capital to finance his aggressive expansion program. The underwriting firm retained by Antar delayed Crazy Eddie's initial public offering (IPO) for more than one year after discovering that the company's financial records were in disarray. Among other problems uncovered by the underwriter were extensive related-party transactions, interest-free loans to employees, and speculative investments unrelated to the company's principal line of business. The underwriting firm was also disturbed to find that nearly all of the company's key executives were members of the Antar family. Certain of these individuals, including Antar's wife and mother, were receiving salaries approaching $100,000 for little or no work. To prepare for the IPO, the underwriter encouraged Antar, Crazy Eddie's chairman of the board and president, to clean up the company's accounting records and financial affairs. The underwriter also urged Antar to hire a chief financial officer (CFO) who had experience with a public company and who was not a member of the Antar family. The underwriter warned Antar that investors would question the competence of Crazy Eddie's executives who were his relatives. Despite the underwriter's concern, Antar hired his first cousin, Sam E. Antar, to serve as Crazy Eddie's CFO. The sale of Crazy Eddie's stock to the public was a tremendous success. Because the IPO was oversubscribed, the company's underwriter obtained permission from the SEC to sell 200,000 more shares than originally planned. Following the public offering, Antar worked hard to convince the investment community particularly financial analysts, that his firm was financially strong and well managed. At every opportunityAntar painted a picture of continued growth and increased market share for Crazy Eddie. One tactic Antar used to convince financial analysts that the company had a rosy future was to invite them to a store and demonstrate in person his uncanny ability to \"close\" sales. Such tactics worked to perfection as analysts from prominent investment firms released glowing reports regarding Crazy Eddie's management team and the company's bright prospects. One analyst wrote, \"Crazy Eddie is a disciplined, competently organized firm with a sophisticated management and a welltrained, dedicated staff.\"3 Another analyst wrote that Antar is a \"brilliant merchant surrounded by a deeply dedicated organization eager to create an important retail business.\"4Because of such reports and continued strong operating results (as reflected by the company's 1984-1987 financial statements shown in Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2), the price of Crazy Eddie's stock skyrocketed. Many investors who purchased the company's stock in the IPO realized a 1,000 percent increase in the value of their investments. EXHIBIT 1 1984-1987 BALANCE SHEETS OF CRAZY EDDIE CRAZY EDDIE, INC. BALANCE SHEETS (000s omitted) March 1, 1987 March 2, 1986 March 3, 1985 May 31, 1 Current assets: Cash $ 9,347 $ 13,296 $22,273 $ 1,375 Short-term investments 121,957 26,840 Receivables 10,846 2,246 2,740 2,604 Merchandise inventories 109,072 59,864 26,543 23,343 Prepaid expenses 10,639 2,363 645 514 Total current assets 261,861 104,609 52,201 27,836 Restricted cash 3,356 7,058 Due from affiliates 5,739 Property, plant and equipment 26,401 7,172 3,696 1,845 Construction in process 6,253 1,154 CRAZY EDDIE, INC. BALANCE SHEETS (000s omitted) March 1, 1987 March 2, 1986 March 3, 1985 May 31, 1 Other assets 6,596 5,560 1,419 1,149 $294,858 $126,950 $65,528 $36,569 Accounts payable $ 50,022 $ 51,723 $23,078 $20,106 Notes payable 2,900 Short-term debt 49,571 2,254 423 124 Unearned revenue 3,641 3,696 1,173 764 5,593 17,126 8,733 6,078 108,827 74,799 33,407 29,972 Long-term debt 8,459 7,701 7,625 46 Convertible subordinated debentures 80,975 Unearned revenue 3,337 1,829 635 327 Total assets Current liabilities: Accrued expenses Total current liabilities Stockholders' equity: CRAZY EDDIE, INC. BALANCE SHEETS (000s omitted) March 1, 1987 March 2, 1986 March 3, 1985 May 31, 1 Common stock 313 280 134 50 Additional paid-in capital 57,678 17,668 12,298 574 Retained earnings 35,269 24,673 11,429 5,600 Total stockholders' equity 93,260 42,621 23,861 6,224 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $294,858 $126,950 $65,528 $36,569 Crazy Eddie Goes ...Bust Despite Crazy Eddie's impressive operating results during the mid-1980s and the fact that the company's stock was one of the hottest investments on Wall Street, all was not well within the firm. By 1986, the company was in deep trouble. By the latter part of that year, the boom days had ended for the consumer electronics industry. Although sales of consumer electronics were still increasing, the rate of growth had tapered off considerably as compared with the dramatic growth rates realized by the industry during the early 1980s. Additionally, the industry had become saturated with retailers, particularly in major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Crazy Eddie's home base. Increased competition meant smaller profit margins for Crazy Eddie and diminished Antar's ability to extract sweetheart deals from his suppliers. EXHIBIT 2 1984-1987 INCOME STATEMENTS OF CRAZY EDDIE CRAZY EDDIE, INC. INCOME STATEMENTS (000s omitted) Year Ended March Year Ended March Nine Months Ended 1, 1987 2, 1986 March 3, 1985 Year Ended M 31, 1984 Net sales $352,523 $262,268 $136,319 $137,285 Cost of goods sold (272,255) (194,371) (103,421) (106,934) 80,268 67,897 32,898 30,351 Selling, general and administrative expense (61,341) (42,975) (20,508) (22,560) Interest and other income 7,403 3,210 1,211 706 Gross profit Interest expense (5,233) (820) (438) (522) Income before taxes 21,097 27,312 13,163 7,975 Pension contribution (500) (800) (600) Income taxes (10,001) (13,268) Net income $ 10,596 $13,244 $5,829 $3,773 $.34 $.48 $.24 $.18 Net income per share (6,734) (4,202) CRAZY EDDIE, INC. INCOME STATEMENTS (000s omitted) Year Ended March Year Ended March Nine Months Ended 1, 1987 2, 1986 March 3, 1985 Besides the problems posed by the increasingly competitive consumer electronics industry Crazy Eddie faced a corporate meltdown in the late 1980s. The tripling of the company's annual sales volume between 1984 and 1987 and the more complex responsibilities associated with managing a public company imposed an enormous administrative burden on Crazy Eddie's executives. Complicating matters was the disintegration of Antar's inner circle of relatives, who had served as his principal advisors during the first 15 years of his company's existence. Antar forced many of his relatives to leave the firm after they sided with his former wife in a bitter divorce. Even as Crazy Eddie's internal affairs spiraled into chaos and the firm lurched toward financial disaster, Wall Street continued to tout the company's stock as a \"can't miss\" investment. In late 1986, Eddie Antar resigned as company president, although he retained the title of chairman of the board. A few weeks later, he simply dropped out of sight. In the absence of Antar, Crazy Eddie's financial condition worsened rapidly Poor operating results that the company reported for the fourth quarter of fiscal 1987which ended 1 March 1987sent Crazy Eddie's stock price into a tailspin from which it never recovered. In November 1987, a takeover group headed by two wellknown financiers gained control of the company A company-wide physical inventory taken by the new owners uncovered the $65 million shortage of inventory alluded to earlier. That inventory shortage, which was larger than the cumulative profits the company had reported since it Year Ended M 31, 1984 went public in 1984, would eventually plunge Crazy Eddie into bankruptcy and send regulatory authorities in pursuit of Eddie Antar for an explanation. Charges of Accounting Irregularities Extensive investigations of Crazy Eddie's financial records by the new owners and regulatory authorities culminated in fraud charges being filed against Eddie Antar and his former associates. The SEC alleged that after Crazy Eddie went public in 1984, Antar became preoccupied with the price of his company's stock. Antar realized that Crazy Eddie had to keep posting impressive operating results to maintain the upward trend in the stock's price. An SEC investigation revealed that within the first six months after the company went public, Antar ordered a subordinate to overstate inventory by $2 million, resulting in the firm's gross profit being overstated by the same amount. The following year Antar ordered year-end inventory to be overstated by $9 million and accounts payable to be understated by $3 million. Court records documented that Crazy Eddie employees overstated year-end inventory by preparing inventory count sheets for items that did not exist. To understate accounts payable, employees prepared bogus debit memos from vendors and entered them in the company's accounting records. As the economic fortunes of Crazy Eddie began to fade in the late 1980s, Antar became more desperate in his efforts to enhance the company's reported revenues and profits. He ordered company employees to include in inventory consigned merchandise and goods being returned to suppliers. Another fraudulent tactic Antar used to overstate inventory involved transhipping transactions, the large-volume transactions between Crazy Eddie and many of its smaller competitors. Antar knew that financial analysts closely monitor the annual percentage change in \"same-store\" sales for retailers. A decline in this percentage is seen as a negative indicator of a retailer's future financial performance. As the consumer electronics industry became increasingly crowded, the revenues of Crazy Eddie's individual stores began to fall, although the firm's total revenues continued to climb due to new stores being opened each year. To remedy the drop in same-store sales, Antar instructed his employees to record selected transhipping transactions as retail sales of individual stores. For instance, suppose that Crazy Eddie sold 100 microwaves costing $180 each to another retailer at a per unit price of $200. The $20,000 in sales would be recorded as retail sales with a normal gross profit margin of 30 to 50 percentmeaning that inventory would not be credited for the total number of microwaves actually sold. This practice killed two birds with the proverbial one stone. Same-store sales were inflated for selected operating units, and inventory was overstated with a corresponding increase in gross profit from sales. Where Were the Auditors? \"Where were the auditors?\" was a question posed repeatedly by investors, creditors, and other interested parties when the public learned of the Crazy Eddie fraud. Four different accounting firms audited Crazy Eddie's financial statements over its turbulent history. Antar dismissed Crazy Eddie's first accounting firm, a local firm, before he took the company public. The underwriter that managed Crazy Eddie's IPO urged Antar to retain a more prestigious accounting firm to increase the public's confidence in the company's financial statements. As a result, Antar retained Main Hurdman to serve as Crazy Eddie's audit firm. Main Hurdman had a nationwide accounting practice with several prominent clients in the consumer electronics industry. In the mid-1980s, Peat Marwick became Crazy Eddie's audit firm when it merged with Main Hurdman. Following the corporate takeover of Crazy Eddie in 1987, the new owners replaced Peat Marwick with Touche Ross. Much of the criticism triggered by the Crazy Eddie scandal centered on Main Hurdman and its successor, Peat Marwick. Main Hurdman charged Crazy Eddie comparatively modest fees for the company's annual audits.5 A leading critic of major accounting firms alleged that Main Hurdman had done so because it realized that it could make up for any lost revenue by selling consulting services to the company. 6 This same individual challenged Main Hurdman's ability to objectively audit an inventory system that it had effectively developed. Main Hurdman's independence was also questioned because many of Crazy Eddie's accountants were former members of that accounting firm. Critics charge that a company that hires one or more of its former auditors can more easily conceal fraudulent activities during the course of subsequent audits. That is, a former auditor may help his or her new employer undermine subsequent audits. In fact, Crazy Eddie's practice of hiring its former auditors is not unusual. Many accounting firms actually arrange such \"placements\" with audit clients. You would think that if an auditor wanted to leave a public accounting firm, he or she would be discouraged from going to work for clients they had audited. Instead, just the opposite is true with big accounting firms encouraging their personnel to work for clients in the apparent belief that it helps cement the accountant-client relationship.7 Most of the criticism directed at Crazy Eddie's auditors stemmed from their failure to uncover the huge overstatement of the company's inventory and the material understatement of accounts payable. Third parties who filed suit against the auditors accused them of \"aiding and abetting\" the fraud by failing to thoroughly investigate numerous suspicious circumstances they discovered. Of particular concern were several reported instances in which the auditors requested client documents, only to be told that those documents had been lost or inadvertently destroyed. In Peat Marwick and Main Hurdman's defense, Antar and his associates engaged in a large-scale plan to deceive the auditors. For example, after determining which inventory sites the auditors would be visiting at year-end, Antar shipped sufficient inventory to those stores or warehouses to conceal any shortages. Likewise, Crazy Eddie personnel systematically destroyed incriminating documents to conceal inventory shortages from the auditors. Antar also ordered his employees to \"junk\" the sophisticated, computer-based inventory system designed by Main Hurdman and to return to the outdated manual inventory system previously used by the company. The absence of a computer-based inventory system made it much more difficult for the auditors to determine exactly how much inventory the firm had at any point in time. A particularly disturbing aspect of the Crazy Eddie scandal was the involvement of several key accounting employees in the various fraudulent schemes. These parties included the director of the internal audit staff, the acting controller, and the director of accounts payable. Past audit failures demonstrate that a fraud involving the collusion of key accounting personnel is difficult for auditors to uncover. EPILOGUE In June 1989, Crazy Eddie filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition after losing its line of credit. Later that year, the company closed its remaining stores and liquidated its assets. Meanwhile, Eddie Antar was named as a defendant in several lawsuits, including a large civil suit filed by the SEC and a criminal indictment filed by a U.S. district attorney. In January 1990, a federal judge ordered Antar to repatriate $52 million that he had transferred to foreign bank accounts in 1987. The following month, federal marshals began searching for Antar after he failed to appear in federal court. A judge had scheduled a hearing to force Antar to account for the funds he had transferred to overseas bank accounts. After Antar surrendered to federal marshals, the judge found him in contempt and released him on his own recognizance. Following this court appearance, Antar became a fugitive. For the next two years, Antar eluded federal authorities despite reported sightings of him in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, and South America. On 25 June 1992, Israeli police arrested Eddie Antar. At the time, he was living in a small town outside Tel Aviv and posing as an Israeli citizen, David Jacob Levi Cohen. On 31 December 1992, Antar's attorney announced that an extradition agreement had been reached with the U.S. Department of Justice and Israeli authorities. After being extradited, Antar was convicted in July 1993 on 17 counts of financial fraud including racketeering, conspiracy, and mail fraud. In May 1994, a federal judge sentenced Antar to 12 1/2 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay restitution of $121 million to former stockholders and creditors. A federal appeals court overturned Antar's fraud conviction in April 1995. The appeals court ruled that the judge who had presided over Antar's trial had been biased against him and ordered that a new trial be held under a different judge. In May 1996, Antar's attorneys and federal prosecutors arranged a plea bargain agreement to settle the charges outstanding against him. Under the terms of this agreement, Antar pleaded guilty to one federal charge of racketeering and publicly admitted, for the first time, that he had defrauded investors by manipulating his company's accounting records. Following his admission of guilt, one of the prosecuting attorneys commented that \"Crazy Eddie wasn't crazy, he was crooked.\"8 In early 1997, Eddie Antar was sentenced to seven years in federal prison. Antar, who had remained in custody since being extradited to the United States in 1993, received credit for the time he had already spent in prison. As a result, he was required to serve only two years of his seven-year sentence. Several of Antar's former cohorts have also been convicted or have pleaded guilty to fraud charges, including Sam E. Antar, Crazy Eddie's former CFO. After being released from prison, Sam E. Antar openly described and discussed his role in the fraud masterminded by his cousin. He revealed that Eddie had financed his college degree in accounting because the family needed an expert accountant to help design, manage, and conceal the company's fraudulent schemes. Sam graduated magna cum laude in accounting and passed the CPA exam on his first attempt. Upon joining Crazy Eddie, Sam confessed that he became a \"thug\" and a willing participant in the massive fraud: Crazy Eddie was an empire built on deceit. The company was rotten to its core. Eddie Antar, his father, brothers, brother-in-law, me and others formed the nucleus of this massive criminal enterprise. In our day, we considered the humanity of others as weaknesses to be exploited in our efforts to commit our crimes. We simply gave investors, creditors, and many customers a raw deal. ...We were nothing but cold-hearted and soulless criminals. We were two-bit thugs.9 In March 1993, an agreement was reached to settle dozens of pending civil lawsuits spawned by the Crazy Eddie fraud. The contributions of the various defendants to the $42 million settlement pool were not disclosed; however, the defendants contributing to that pool included Peat Marwick and the local accounting firm used by Crazy Eddie before the company went public. Law enforcement authorities recovered more than $150 million from the parties that profited from the fraud. Those funds included more than $40 million that a federal judge ordered Sam Antar, Eddie Antar's father, to surrender in August 2002. In the late 1990s, Eddie Antar's mother purchased the Crazy Eddie logo and the company's former advertising catch phrase, \"Crazy Eddie His prices are insane!\" which had been sold in bankruptcy proceedings years earlier. In 1998, two nephews of Eddie Antar revived their uncle's business. The \"new\" Crazy Eddie operated principally as a mail-order and Internet-based retailer of consumer electronics. In June 2001, a New York business publication reported that the company had hired a former executive in the consumer electronics industry to serve as the \"creative force\" behind its marketing efforts.10 That individual was none other than Crazy Eddie Antar.11 Questions 1. Compute key ratios and other financial measures for Crazy Eddie during the period 1984-1987. Identify and briefly explain the red flags in Crazy Eddie's financial statements that suggested the firm posed a higher-than-normal level of audit risk. 2. Identify specific audit procedures that might have led to the detection of the following accounting irregularities perpetrated by Crazy Eddie personnel: (a) the falsification of inventory count sheets, (b) the bogus debit memos for accounts payable, (c) the recording of transhipping transactions as retail sales, and (d) the inclusion of consigned merchandise in year-end inventory. 3. The retail consumer electronics industry was undergoing rapid and dramatic changes during the 1980s. Discuss how changes in an audit client's industry should affect audit planning decisions. Relate this discussion to Crazy Eddie. 4. Explain what is implied by the term lowballing in an audit context. How can this practice potentially affect the quality of independent audit services? 5. Assume that you were a member of the Crazy Eddie audit team in 1986. You were assigned to test the client's year-end inventory cutoff procedures. You selected 30 purchase invoices entered in the accounting records near year-end: 15 in the few days prior to the client's fiscal year-end and 15 in the first few days of the new year. Assume that client personnel were unable to locate 10 of these invoices. How should you and your superiors have responded to this situation? Explain. 6. Should companies be allowed to hire individuals who formerly served as their independent auditors? Discuss the pros and cons of this practice. 1. This case was coauthored by Carol Knapp, Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma. 2. The facts of this case were drawn from numerous articles and SEC enforcement releases published over a period of several years. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, in particular, closely followed the colorful saga of Crazy Eddie and its founder, Eddie Antar. One of the more comprehensive investigative reports that documented the history of Crazy Eddie, Inc., is the following article: G. Belsky and P. Furman, \"Calculated Madness: The Rise and Fall of Crazy Eddie Antar,\" Grain's New York Business, 5 June 1989, 21-33. That article provided much of the background information regarding Eddie Antar that is included in this case. 3. J. E. Tannenbaum, \"How Mounting Woes at Crazy Eddie Sank Turnaround Effort,\" Wall Street Journal, 10 July 1989, A1, A4. 4. G. Belsky and P. Furman, \"Calculated Madness: The Rise and Fall of Crazy Eddie Antar,\" Crain's New York Business, 5 June 1989, 26. 5. This practice is commonly known as \"lowballing.\" 6. M. I. Weiss, \"Auditors: Be Watchdogs, Not Just Bean Counters,\" Accounting Today, 15 November 1993, 41. 7. Ibid, 42. 8. F. A. McMorris, \"Crazy Eddie Inc.'s Antar Admits Guilt in Racketeering Conspiracy,\" Wall Street Journal, 9 May 1996, B7. 9. Sam E. Antar, \"Crazy Eddie Speaks, Cousin Sam E. Antar Responds,\" White Collar Fraud(http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com), 25 June 2007. 10. Grain's New York Business, \"Week in Review,\" 11 June 2001, 34. 11. In 2004, the \"new\" Crazy Eddie failed. The company's trademarks were subsequently purchased by a Texas-based firm, which then sold them to an entrepreneur in Eddie Antar's hometown of Brooklyn, New York. This latter individual's attempt to revive the Crazy Eddie franchise ended in 2012 when he closed the website for the venture