Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street by Gary R. Weiss

Author:Gary R. Weiss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Organized crime, Securities fraud, Wall Street, Corporate & Business History, Mafia - New York (State) - New York, Criminals & Outlaws, General, N.Y.), Murder, Business, True Crime, BUS000000, Serial Killers, Stockbrokers - New York (State) - New York, Louis, Securities fraud - New York (State) - New York, Wall Street (New York, Business & Economics, Investments & Securities, New York (State), Pasciuto, Stockbrokers, Securities industry, New York, Biography & Autobiography, Mafia, Biography
ISBN: 9780446528573
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2003-05-14T23:28:37+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Greenway was like coming home, if home was a combination social club, parochial-school yard, and lunatic asylum. It was a bit like Hanover, only without the Roy-imposed order and corporal punishment.

Louis had a huge office that looked all the way up Broadway. The offices seemed to have been thrown together at random from IKEA and the Salvation Army Thrift Store. But that was okay. Everybody was having fun.

“It was a zoo. They would run in the water fountains downstairs. Joe Temp did a half million, pulled his pants down, ran through the fountain. They were crazy psychopaths. There were no rules at Greenway. We came and went as we pleased. We had parties up there, we got high. We had everything. We got a Wiffle ball bat and played Wiffle ball.”

Rocco and Chris had their own crew, about thirty-five or forty kids in all. Benny had stayed at Sovereign, and Louis went to Greenway with about eighteen cold-callers. The crews were separated from each other, as they were at Hanover. Louis had his own boardroom. “I didn’t like my guys associating with anybody else,” said Louis. “Cancer. That’s what I used to call it. Other people have a different work ethic. They cause your guys to have cancer, like. It rubs off on them. These guys work like this, your guys start to work like that. I used to train my guys my own way, according to my rules. They start seeing other people’s rules, they get different ideas.”

Being around guys like Chris and Rocco, guys who really knew how to sell stock, was important because selling stock wasn’t getting any easier. The public was starting to get wise to chop stocks. It was a gradual thing. People wanted to hear about the companies. Were they legitimate? It was a concern now, and a lot of customers were wondering if the stocks they were pitched were phonies. Clients were getting wise to big spreads (big differences between the bid and ask prices). Chop stocks had huge spreads. They could find out that kind of stuff easily. The Internet was just beginning, but there were plenty of ways to get quotes and corporate info. People were getting smarter. But not so smart that they weren’t going to buy stocks over the phone.

But the change in public attitudes was gradual, and Louis and the others didn’t think about it too much. They had more important things on their minds. Mentoring, for instance. Now that he actually had a license, Louis decided to share it with one of the underprivileged cold-callers who was not so blessed. A kid named John was showing promise on the phone, so Louis let him run his own book of clients as a kind of junior partner, using Louis’s name just as Louis had used Benny’s name. In a warmhearted moment he had even cut the kid in on a deal. John borrowed $11,000 to sink into a deal involving warrants in a company called Zanart. John was promised a share of the profits in return.

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