The most hated man on Wall Street.(Howard Schilit of the Center for Financial Research and Analysis)

Howard Schilit was exposing overvalued companies back when investors only acknowledged good news

Howard Schilit doesn't look like the most hated man on Wall Street. In fact, he doesn't look like he belongs anywhere near Wall Street. Yet Schilit -- who has turned a casual interest in accounting fraud into a thriving multimillion dollar business -- says he once was despised by legions of money managers.

"In late '99," he says, "I was the most hated person in the investment business.

To understand how he got to that point, you have to go back to a time when no one on Wall Street ever had heard of Howard Schilit, and his firm -- the Rockville-based Center for Financial Research and Analysis -- had yet to be conceived.

Schilit grew up in the Forest Hills section of New York, a product of public schools and Queens College. His first exposure to the accounting world was through a CPA firm looking for help with a big audit, but the man who would send tremors through Wall Street was not particularly enticed.

"It didn't strike me as too exciting and glamorous," he says.

Nevertheless, Schilit majored in accounting, although he didn't see a CPA job in his future. "I wanted to be a professor," he says, adding that most of his jobs growing up -- from tutoring other students to spending his summers as a swimming instructor -- had something to do with teaching.

Schilit pursued this career path through master's and Ph.D. programs, landing at American University in D.C. Although he only expected to stay "for a …