Mickey Monus

In this paper I will be analyzing the research on Mickey Monus and his fraud crimes. I will exam the fraud and how it applies to this course, such as where it belongs on the fraud tree. Along with what type of fraud was committed, and how they got away with it for so long.
Mickey Monus, the former president of the most successful multi-billion-dollar discount drug chain in American history, is from a town in Ohio called Youngstown. Monus is the child of two of Youngstown’s finest families and as a child, went to a prep school. Once he got of age, he then attended Babson College only to come back home and work with his relatives in the distribution business. In the early 80’s; approximately 1985, him and his friend, David Shapira visited

The concept of the business was called “power-buying”, which is scooping up huge batches of inventory at special prices. This method offered the customers fewer selections of products, but in return great savings. Which the use of this technique, the business soon outpaced the companies that provided them the startup money. By 1988; the corporation had 100 stores. This was also the year that Monus was being honored as on of the year’s top entrepreneurs by venture magazine. Then in 1991, the company had spread to roughly 200 stores coast to coast. With this amount of success, Westinghouse Credit Corp. and an investment arm of prestigious Freres signed on to the cause. This further convinced him to “restore Youngstown’s self esteem”; he renovated the abandoned building in downtown and made them his headquarters, which then brought thousands of jobs to the valley. With the proceeds, he funded Camp Tuff Enuff which is a program for kids who are at the risk of drug abuse. He then went on to be the founder of the Semipro World Basketball League and a hometown team called the Youngstown

Two days later, the Phar-Mor board confronted him with two books that had been found. The board had found that one of the books had largely inflated profits. This revealed that with the board, banks, and investors deceived, Monus was able to pull in more pay and sell stock at inflated prices to keep everything afloat. “To cover up the continuing losses, Pat Finn was now faxing falsified financial reports to the board of directors and to David Shapira every week. But in November of 1990, a secretary mistakenly faxed a report with the real numbers to Shapira. Here in black and white was a report which no CEO could ignore” (Media n.d.) This is when David Shapira took action; he notified the feds, investors and the public, changing the locks, and laying off 1,000 workers, firing the alleged accomplices, and shutting down the league and pride