Where are they now?
EDDIE ANTAR served seven years in prison, paid $75 million in penalties and later tried unsuccessfully to reopen the Crazy Eddie chain.
EDDIE ANTAR served seven years in prison, paid $75 million in penalties and later tried unsuccessfully to reopen the Crazy Eddie chain. He tried to make a movie about his life starring Danny DeVito, but lawyers argued that Mr. Antar didn’t have the right to sell his story due to an unpaid $1 billion judgment owed to in-vestors. Mr. Antar is now 61 and is said to be suffering from liver cancer. He lives in the same Brooklyn house that the government seized from his father before a relative bought it back.
MITCHELL ANTAR, Eddie’s brother, former executive vice president, served two years in prison and paid about $2 million in civil penalties. He lives quietly in Oakhurst, N.J.
ALLEN ANTAR, Eddie’s brother, former head of corporate sales, was acquitted at trial but is still on the hook for about $3 million in civil penalties that the government hasn’t collected. His last known address is in Brooklyn.
ELLEN AND BEN KUSZER, Eddie’s sister and brother-in-law, ran record stores located inside Crazy Eddie shops. The government is still trying to collect a $2 million judgment against Mr. Kuszer. The couple live in Brooklyn.
SAM M. ANTAR, Eddie’s father, was never charged with criminal wrongdoing, but he, Allen Antar and Ben Kuszer were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and found guilty in a civil trial. The feds seized $15 million of Sam Antar’s assets. He died penniless in 2005.
ROSE ANTAR, Eddie’s mother, who drew a salary for unspecified duties at the time of the company’s 1984 initial public offering, lives in Long Branch, N.J.
DEBORAH ROSEN ANTAR, Eddie’s first wife, divorced Eddie in 1984. She and her daughters paid $3.9 million to disgorge profits from Eddie’s illegal stock sales. Ms. Antar lives in Brooklyn.
DEBORAH EHRLICH ANTAR, Eddie’s second wife, is referred to as “Debbie 2” in family circles. She reportedly divorced Eddie around 2007. The government never brought legal action against her. Her whereabouts are unknown.
ABE GRINBERG AND ARNOLD SPINDLER, former Crazy Eddie business partners, tipped off the SEC about the Antars’ fraud. Mr. Grinberg later pleaded guilty to lying to the SEC. Mr. Spindler was never charged with wrongdoing. Their whereabouts are unknown.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, the prosecutor who led the government’s case against the Antars, was Department of Homeland Security secretary in the second Bush administration. He’s now a senior counsel at the Washington law firm Covington & Burling LLP.
JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO, head of the federal prosecutor’s office in Newark, N.J., which began the Crazy Eddie investigation, now sits on the U.S. Su-preme Court.
Sources: Sam E. Antar, SEC
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