The two definitions of "con"

Con: short for convict..often used in context of a former prisoner..as in  "ex con". Con is also used as a verb, being derived from the term "confidence man" To con someone is to gain their confidence and then swindle them. Sometimes the two uses of the word come together, as they surely do in the person of Barry Minkow. His latest fall from grace angers me, more than anything else because of his current expressions of remorse and self loathing. Not only do they ring hollow, they ring of familiarity .  It is the same song he sang when he wrote his first book about his prior fall and redemption.

He ran a con and money laundering outfit via his boy genius company ZZZZ Best in my childhood Reseda. He got caught , went to jail, found God and started a prison ministry. When released, he was given an opportunity to make good by two different churches, becoming the Senior Pastor of the second one. He wrote several more books, the latest of which having to do with how to avoid being defrauded, conned or swindled. He became, for all appearances, obsessed with catching other frauds. He started his own fraud squad (while still head of his church) and financed it by taking stock positions against the companies he was exposing. That part had me wondering if he was wandering near the edge.  Well, near the edge and off the cliff he was. He has been arrested and confessed to a number of charges of fraud and attempted extortion, even, if I understand correctly, stock manipulation. Better than all that, he used church funds (by forging documentation) to finance his dealings. 

Several stories have run in the local papers. He is quoted more than once beating his breast in self denigration, on how he blew it big time. You think, Barry?  You think? You used the office of the church to  cloak yourself in an air of redemption and respectability. You made a fortune of trumpeting your second chance, and then you blew that second chance to smithereens.

In what I believe to be  the ultimate example of irony, he was quoted in the paper in a story about a movie producer who is accused of taking production money to make indie films, and then pocketing much of it without producing the goods. He made what I can only term a vanity film with Minkow, which failed to come to light of day. Minkow called another investor and warned him against the producer. I guess you can't con a con, right? Or it takes one to know one.

Go to jail, Barry. And when you get out, I hope you go straight...but I don't want to hear about it. Not another book, not another movie, not another remorseful word. If your ego can handle it.