Crazy Eddie's Insanity Finally Ends

It's been a quarter-century since the Crazy Eddie electronics chain went out of business, but it has taken until now to unravel the stock swindle that followed the company going public -- the largest securities fraud of the pre-Madoff era.  If you lived in the NY/NJ/PA/CT area in the 1970s or 1980s, there was no way you avoided seeing the company's commercials on TV. The spots -- which featured WPIX-FM disc jockey Jerry Carroll in a turtleneck and blazer (or Santa suit every December) exclaiming that Crazy Eddie's prices were "insane!" -- were ubiquitous, and helped the chain grow from one store in Brooklyn to 43 stores in four states. Here's one of the last ads they ran before the bottom fell out...

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