r/70s • u/Marabuto1994 • 2d ago
business & industry Would Crazy Eddie have gotten away with it if they didn’t go public?
Context: Crazy Eddie was a discount chain of electronic stores famous for their low prices, and become one of the biggest fraud operations of all time. From 1969-1984 they were making so many millions by skimming cash that it was coming out of the ceilings and they were running out of places to hide it. then in 1984 they stopped skimming in order to show Wall Street they had legit profits to go public. They falsely inflated their inventory by stocking empty boxes to make it look like they were bigger than they were. Not long after they got way too big and couldn’t keep up with the fraud to match wall street’s expectations. they tried to go private again but it was too late. Its one thing to fool the auditors that you have 50 TVs, but how do you tell them theres 50,000?