Free Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else) by Ken Auletta

borrowed from the healthy El Pollo Locos, plus interest. “There were nights,” Kassan says, “Ronnie would say to me, ‘I just want to keep the house.’ It was Armageddon.”
    In June 1995, a Superior Court judge found him guilty of “grand theft by embezzlement,” but ruled that his motive in taking the money was not personal greed but a desire to keep El Pollo Loco alive. Kassan won a measure of leniency when he reached an agreement with prosecutors to withdraw a planned not guilty plea. He says he did not know that a guilty plea resulted in automatic legal suspension in California, and he would not have pled guilty if he knew this. He received a suspended sentence, was placed on probation for three years, and ordered to perform five hundred hours of community service. He knew that if hesuccessfully completed the terms of his probation, California law allowed him to change his plea to not guilty, and his felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor and eventually expunged. The State Bar of California, however, offered no leniency; he was formally suspended. In June 1996, after completing a year of probation, Kassan’s felony conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor and erased from his record. But the shame continued to haunt him.
    Kassan was despondent. He poured out his hurt to a psychiatrist—four times each week, he says. He was determined to appeal the State Bar ruling, not because he cared to practice law again—he says he did not want to—but because he couldn’t bear the thought of his Jewish mother knowing her son could not practice law. “My mother always said, ‘You need something to fall back on.’” He appealed to the Supreme Court of California, challenging his suspension from the State Bar. “The one and only chance to tell my story was by challenging the California State Bar,” he says. After hearing the case, in April 1999 the state’s highest court ruled in his favor, finding:
    In the matter before us the record is clear that respondent’s primary motivation was to save the various El Pollo Loco operations. . . . In respondent’s case there was no attempt to hide this conduct, and when confronted he immediately acknowledged his actions and made immediate arrangements to make good his theft. . . . We make no effort to minimize the seriousness of respondent’s criminal misconduct. He fraudulently converted a large amount of money to his own use in violation of a most fundamental rule of honesty. Nevertheless, considering the circumstances surrounding the criminal conduct, twenty years of blemish-free practice prior to the misconduct, respondent’s immediate restitution, recognition of wrongdoingand genuine remorse we believe the record demonstrates that disbarment is not required to achieve the goals of attorney discipline.
    A Google search for Michael Kassan finds mention of his felony conviction and near disbarment only if one is willing to scroll through many pages; his Wikipedia profile is silent about it. Understandably, it is something he would prefer not to dwell on, and yet it’s never entirely gone from his thoughts. For much of his adult life since, he says, he has glanced up at the rearview mirror, fearing that he was being chased. His shame has remained dormant, but ever since there have been two Michael Kassans—the cheerful charmer and the sinner. Most see Michael Kassan the successful optimist; few see the self-conscious man fearful that his humiliating past could somehow come back to haunt him.
    Dennis Holt, who had been a law client of Kassan’s, knew of his legal tribulations and in 1994 offered him an outstretched hand. Holt had founded Western International Media in 1970. At a time when agencies sold themselves as one-stop shopping places, offering clients a full range of creative, strategic, and media-buying services, Western successfully unbundled media buying. With thirty-seven offices and a thousand employees, Western became the world’s foremost buyer