Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street
Read Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street Online
Authors: Gary R. Weiss
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #True Crime, #General, #Criminals & Outlaws, #Biography, #Business, #Business & Economics, #Murder, #Organized crime, #Serial Killers, #Corporate & Business History, #New York, #New York (State), #Investments & Securities, #Mafia, #Securities industry, #Stockbrokers, #Wall Street (New York; N.Y.), #Wall Street, #Mafia - New York (State) - New York, #Securities fraud, #BUS000000, #Stockbrokers - New York (State) - New York, #Securities fraud - New York (State) - New York, #Pasciuto; Louis
Copyright © 2003 by Gary Weiss
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: May 2003
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2800-0
Contents
Prologue: Lies and Consequences
part two: SANTA CLAUS FUCK-YOU MONEY
For Anthony and Amanda
Writing a book while holding a full-time job is a massive undertaking. It requires the same amount of back-breaking toil that
was exhibited by Gary Cooper in
Sergeant York
, in the scenes in which he plowed fields at night to save up pennies for a piece of bottom land. Endless hours, lost sleep.
Definitely not for me. My thanks go to Stephen B. Shepard, editor-in-chief of
Business Week
magazine, for sparing me that ordeal by generously providing me with the substantial leave of absence that I required to
complete this book.
Louis Pasciuto was not a source for any of the articles that I wrote for
Business Week
on stock fraud and the Mob’s push into Wall Street. Even so, this book is part of a continuum, if you will, that began with
“The Mob on Wall Street” in December 1996, and continued in several other articles that appeared between 1996 and 2000.
BW
showed a special kind of courage in running those stories, particularly the first one—which other media outlets, though in
possession of the essential facts, wouldn’t touch. My editors at the time, former senior editor Seymour Zucker and chief economist
Bill Wolman, were gutsy advocates and supreme wordsmiths. Seymour is a journalist and mentor nonpareil, and in many respects
those stories were as much his as they were mine. Kenneth M. Vittor, McGraw Hill’s general counsel, steered me from numerous
possible legal pitfalls and proved many times that he is as fine an editor as he is a lawyer. Valuable assistance, for those
articles and this book, came from Jamie Russell, head of
Business Week’s
Information Center, and her able staff.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jerry Capeci, the dean of New York’s Mob journalists, for pointing Louis in my direction.
Jerry’s website, Ganglandnews.com, is the premier source of organized crime information on the Internet, and it proved immensely
valuable in double-checking facts and for its treasure trove of Mob lore.
The staff of the North American Securities Administrators Association responded with forbearance to my endless requests for
brokerage records. My thanks go to NASAA’s executive director, Marc Beauchamp, and his colleagues Cheryl Besl, Jerry Munk,
and Ashley Baker.
I also am indebted to Paul Schoeman, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and his colleagues, for
their courtesy and assistance.
Many persons whom I cannot name were crucial in verifying Louis’s story. They include former chop house brokers and traders
and lawyers and wiseguys, organized crime investigators and former regulators. They know who they are, and I hope they know
I am grateful. I also cannot thank by name—not because of confidentiality, but because I don’t know their names—the cheerful
and overworked staffs of the various record rooms of the federal and state courthouses in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island,
and New Jersey. I’d have been unable to write this book were it not for their assistance in fetching, often from far-off archives,
the voluminous files in their custody. One of the byproducts of stock fraud and organized crime prosecutions, including the
vast majority of cases that do not go to trial, is a mountain of correspondence and bail applications and sentencing minutes
and hearing transcripts. Such documentation was the principal source for substantial portions of this book, including the
chapters describing the early career of Charles Ricottone, and provided substantiation throughout.
Dr. Susan Shapiro, a noted child psychologist, read drafts of the chapters concerning Louis’s early life and made valuable
comments. Erin Condit also read several draft chapters and offered many useful suggestions. At
Business Week
, Anthony Bianco and John Byrne were generous with their advice and support.
This book would not have seen the light of day were it not for the enthusiasm and advocacy of my agent, the estimable Morton
L. Janklow. He and his colleague Luke Janklow patiently steered me through the labyrinthine process of bringing a book to
life (which was a bit more complicated for this book, I suspect, than most others). They both went above and beyond the call
of duty many times. My thanks also go to their colleagues Bennett Ashley and Richard Morris.
At Warner Books I had the rare good fortune to work with executive editor Rick Horgan, who shares the credit for virtually
everything in this book that may seem more than slightly worthwhile. Copyeditor Dave Cole ably rescued me from myself on several
occasions, as did Elizabeth A. McNamara of Davis Wright Tremaine, who gave the manuscript a painstaking but sympathetic legal
review. Rick’s assistant Katharine Rapkin provided valuable assistance as well.
My heartfelt thanks go to members of Louis’s family, who were candid and courageous in sharing with me their recollections—no
matter how painful. I am grateful to Stefanie Pasciuto, Fran Pasciuto, Nicholas Pasciuto, Louis’s sister Nicole, and Stefanie’s
father and mother, referred to by the pseudonyms George and Barbara Donohue.
I also thank, of course, Louis Pasciuto. We spent many hours together, and they were not always easy. Time alone will determine
whether the man who was born to steal has truly left his old life behind him. As of this writing, he certainly has. And I
hope that his young son and daughter, when they read this book, will come to understand Louis and the era that he embodied,
without losing the love and respect to which their father is entitled. This book is dedicated to them.
I first met Louis Pasciuto at a restaurant in New York City in December 1999. When I laid eyes on him, I felt like turning
around and walking out.
I’d been covering his world for the greater part of a decade. I thought I knew the names of every leading practitioner of
stock fraud. I thought I knew the stock promoters, the chop houses, the rogue brokers, and the mobsters. I thought I was an
expert. And I’d never heard of Louis Pasciuto.
When Louis called me and we agreed to meet, I ran his name through the usual databases. Nothing. Nobody had ever written a
word about him. His regulatory record was no more or less tarnished than most of his ilk. He was, it seemed, quite plain,
a total nonentity. And when I got my first glimpse of him, slumped on a seat near the cashier, my fears were realized. He
wore a leather jacket and was leafing nervously through a bodybuilding magazine. I thought he was a messenger or a waiter
going off duty. He was obviously much too young to know anything or anybody of consequence.
When we shook hands, I noticed something that surprised me. He was nervous. People like him weren’t supposed to be nervous.
He spoke softly, with a New York street accent so thick I sometimes had difficulty understanding him. But I had no trouble
understanding the contents of the large manila envelope he’d brought.
It was an indictment. His indictment. It was impressive.
Louis was not just another crooked broker who’d been rounded up in the crackdown on rogue brokers and their Mob partners.
He’d come of age in the Wall Street Mafia.
After talking to him for a while I realized he was different from the scam artists and wiseguys I’d interviewed over the years.
He realized what he’d done. He didn’t rationalize. He wasn’t ashamed, and he wasn’t sorry, but he was realistic. He’d been
caught.
As I spent hours talking with Louis in that and future meetings, and many more hours checking out his story, my initial misgivings
were replaced by a combination of awe and horror. He was as cold and merciless with himself, in telling the story of his own
degraded life, as he’d been in removing the life savings of hundreds of investors. He was a confirmed atheist, but before
long I realized I was taking his confession.
Even so, it bothered me that Louis was a professional liar—a living, breathing personification of the Liar’s Paradox. How
could I believe anything this guy said to me? It was the same problem facing federal prosecutors, who were using Louis—and
a host of other “cooperators”—as informants and consultants, and preparing them to confront their old pals in court. It’s
not a new problem. It’s been around for as long as criminals have been caught and “turned.”
I didn’t have to wrestle for very long with the phenomenon of a liar expounding on the art of lying and stealing. Much of
what he told me became grist for future indictments and was confirmed by reams of documentation, including the court records
of various civil and criminal cases involving Louis’s employers and associates. Crucial parts of his story—from the identities
of obscure Mafioso to the intimate details of stock fraud—were independently verified by people well outside Louis’s orbit.
Louis was a keen observer. He remembered in astonishing detail, down to the clothing people wore and the prices of stock he
sold years before. Once I double-checked the price of a stock involved in one of Louis’s schemes. Louis had said it was $3.50.
The Bloomberg database—which is pretty near infallible—said $2.50. Louis stuck to his guns. He didn’t care what Bloomberg
said—it was $3.50, not $2.50. I later realized I’d asked for the wrong data. Louis was right.
So this tale is as true as it is ugly. The names of the brokerage firms and companies haven’t been changed, and neither have
the names of the brokers, their friends, and their favored customers. Only the names of victims, and of Louis’s children and
his wife’s family, have been changed.
None of the companies whose stocks were traded by Louis and his pals were ever implicated in any wrongdoing. There’s no evidence
that the companies, or any of their employees, were aware that their shares were the subject of illegal stock-manipulation
schemes.
In a man musing on objects, attachment to them is conceived.
From attachment springs desire;
from desire springs wrath.
From wrath is utter confoundedness;
from utter confoundedness, whirling memory;
from loss of memory, the loss of the understanding;
from loss of the understanding he perishes.
—The Bhagavad Gita
as translated by Jogindranath Mukharj, 1900/M.
Lies and Consequences
Louis Pasciuto was lying on his bunk, staring at the green-painted steel bottom of the bunk above him. Night after night he
would lie there, forcing his unwilling mind to go blank as he listened to the snores of the Chinese guy sprawled two and a
half feet above him. He would just lie there, sleeping fitfully, until the next cough or snort or moan from the Chinese guy.
For years, Louis’s mind had been a well-trained dog. It was a mutt he could get to roll over, jump through burning hoops—and,
above all, play dead. But for the past few weeks his mind had become restless, rebellious. It was the only part of Louis Pasciuto
not under the direct control of the Hudson County Correctional Center. So he was helpless, despairing, as his thoughts wandered
toward his Guys.
