1987: The corporate assets of ZZZZ Best Co. are sold at bankruptcy auction in Los Angeles for $62,000. Less than four months earlier, the carpet-cleaning company run by 21-year-old whiz kid Barry Minkow had a stock-market value of roughly $300 million, and the stock had more than quadrupled since in initial public offering in 1986. But ZZZZ Best (pronounced "ze best") had virtually no customers, revenues or assets, and Minkow had set up an elaborate system of phantom offices and phony account records, even bribing a building owner to pretend in the presence of an outside auditor that ZZZZ Best was cleaning his carpets. Minkow learned a lesson, serving five years in federal prison, but it's not clear whether his investors did.

The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 1987, p. B4;Keith Slotter, "The CPA's Role in Detecting and Preventing Fraud," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, vol. 68, no. 7 (July 1999), p. 5, at: