Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (15 page)

“Ivan used to go to whatever the hottest place was at the time. For example, if First Hanover just did an IPO, this guy would
come and say, ‘I’m gonna go to First Hanover and rob the leads. You want first crack at them?’ We paid a lot of money for
leads. Sometimes nine, ten thousand for a few thousand leads. We’d pay sometimes two dollars a lead.

“Ivan broke into First Hanover while we were at A. T Brod. He broke into A. S. Goldmen. This tough guy was running that place—we
were afraid to use them right away. We waited a couple of months. At Brod we spent maybe twenty-five thousand dollars on leads.
Ivan used to come to us first. We were paying enough money that we would get the originals. He ran one copy for himself, one
for us, and one for another broker. He was honest about that. He’d come to us after a year and say, ‘Are you done beating
up on those leads? I’ll sell them to somebody else.’

“He would steal the client books. People would come in the next day, and the books were missing. Or he would copy them. He
would actually spend time in the place copying them. Once he went to this place in New Jersey with one of my friends. They
went in and stayed there for hours, copying leads. Then they put everything back. Ivan was smart. He made friends with the
security guards—fellow black guys—and offered them money. He’d give them five hundred out of his pocket, go upstairs, break
the window, go in, copy the leads, then leave.

“That happened to us once at Brod. Somebody came in and copied our book. We found out because people were calling our clients.
We knew it was Ivan. One of my clients said he got called by somebody at some other firm.

“It was very funny, actually. He was a real project nigger. At first he acts like he’s going to shake us down. ‘That’s what
I do. I took the book.’ Benny knew how to deal with them, because he used to sell blow to them. He’s like, ‘You got to be
kidding me. You’re gonna be dead.’ Benny later tells me Ivan said he only sold it to two people, and he apologized. He was
afraid somebody would kill him. Our crew was crazy. Everybody was a street guy, and they were fucking lunatics. They’d have
beat this kid senseless.”

It was a ritual now. A privilege of rank and earning power. Louis and Benny’s office was in the power position at the far
end of the twenty-sixth floor, farthest from the entrance. Every day Louis would saunter in at ten o’clock or later, stroll
in with sunglasses on and hat down to his nose, past whatever sales meetings they might be having, past all of the kids working
the phones, over to his corner office. The kids would stare at him, with his Rolex on his wrist and his custom-made shirt
hanging out of his custom-tailored pants, and be envious. Which was okay.

He knew he was being watched. He used to be one of them. He used to watch as Chris Wolf slouched in late at Hanover. Chris
Wolf, the Ferrari-driving rich guy. Now Louis was the rich guy, the Chris Wolf. It was a great feeling. And motivating to
the kids, just as he was motivated watching Chris Wolf.

The money-disposal problem was worsening as summer gave way to fall of 1994 and A. T Brod started to pay off for Louis, Benny,
and their cold-callers. With $100,000 to $125,000 coming in every month, an ugly possibility reared its head. Louis might
have to save some of it.

No way. His father used to save, and Louis did not want to be like his father, at least when it came to money. Louis’s father
worked and saved and struggled. If he were his father he might have put away some money for a rainy day. But he didn’t know
the meaning of a rainy day. Louis didn’t even know what a cloud was. There were no clouds, let alone rain, in his life. If
one appeared overhead, and it started raining, he might have thought someone had spilled a glass of water out of a window.
He wasn’t interested in buying a house or even a condo. What was he going to do with a house? You can live in a house, and
a house like Roy’s place in Richmondtown can be awesome, but houses aren’t fun. All you do is live there.

The money was regular now. At Todd the money would come in as spurts—eighty or ninety grand one month, and next month maybe
thirty. At Brod it was a hundred grand at least, every month. “The next month would come, we’d still have like seventy grand
left over,” said Louis. “It just started adding up and adding up. What to do with this money? It was ridiculous. George Donohue
used to tell me, ‘You know, it doesn’t always come this easy.’ But I thought it was never-ending, a never-ending saga. Because
every month, we’d get sometimes three hundred grand. It was crazy. Twenty years old. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

It was at about this time that Louis started getting manila envelopes from the IRS. He would throw them out without even opening
them. Nick Pasciuto used to tell him that he would have to pay taxes someday. Bullshit. Louis was not ever paying taxes. “Once
I had four or five hundred thousand dollars sitting in a fucking bank, and my accountant said, ‘Send them a hundred thirty
grand.’ And I said, ‘You don’t understand. I’m not sending them any money. I’ll get the cash out of the bank right now,’”
said Louis. And he wasn’t joking. He didn’t like having his money in the bank. It was just sitting there, getting rat-shit
interest, and all he would get for his cash would be receipts and account statements. Pieces of paper—just as he was taking
money from his clients and giving them pieces of paper.

Louis was no fool. This paper-for-money shit would have to end. “I used to get paranoid to have it in the bank,” said Louis.
“Somebody’s going to get it. I used to go to the bank, withdraw twenty, thirty thousand even though I didn’t need it. I just
didn’t want it in there. I just felt not safe with it in the bank. I liked having it in my house—‘Ah, there it is!’ Ain’t
nobody taking it but me now.

“Used to take them an hour to count it up. I got so good at Marine Midland that I used to call the lady there in the morning
and say, ‘I’m coming at two o’clock. I’ll need fifty thousand.’ I’d go there, go to the back room, count the money, leave.
I got it in hundreds. A couple of times I got twenty grand in twenties. It was tremendous.

‘I put a safe in my apartment, in my walk-in closet, bolted to the floor. It was about three feet high, big, but I still didn’t
have room for all my shit. Me and Sally Leads were the only ones that had the combination. I used to have stacks of money
in there—twenties, hundreds. I remember one time Frankie Balls [a cold-caller] asked me for like eight thousand and he thought
I’d have to go to the bank and get it. I said, ‘Nah, I’ll give it to you. Come to the house.’ I remember I looked in my safe
and I said, ‘I’ll give it to him.’ It didn’t affect my stacks. I had like stacks of money. I didn’t care about the eight thousand.
I was just thinking about how I’d have to—I had a name for it—‘load up.’ I’d have to go load up again from the bank.”

The money couldn’t sit in a safe forever. Louis was no miser.

Nearly every weekend Louis and Stefanie went to South Beach in Miami, usually with Benny and his girlfriend Michelle. In the
winters they had a rental at Hunter Mountain. When he wasn’t on South Beach or Hunter Mountain, he was in Atlantic City. When
he wasn’t in one of those places or with Stefanie, he would be at another money funnel, Scores.

He would go there most weeknights, meeting important new people. Celebrities. Sports figures. The kind of people you meet
in New York when you go to the right places and have a lot of money. And when you have a lot of money you have to look as
if you have a lot of money. You don’t buy suits off the rack and you don’t wear a Seiko. Watches don’t tell time. They tell
something about you. They make a statement. He got his first Rolex right after he got to Todd, and it was on his wrist when
he turned twenty. From then on he always had at least one Rolex, and by the time he got to Brod he had a bunch in his bedroom
drawer.

Buying stuff was fun.

When he went to Tourneau on Madison Avenue for the Presidential, he came with a hat pulled over his nose and pajama-bottom-type
pants. It was a thing to see. Coming into a store like Tourneau with Sally Leads, and being ignored, and going to the Rolex
counter, and putting a stack of money on the counter. He got service. Good service.

“I went from wondering where I was going to get ten dollars to go back and forth from work, to buying stupid shit and not
even thinking about it,” said Louis. “It wouldn’t bother me. I wouldn’t think twice. I bought Louis Vuitton wallets. They’re
four hundred. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t think about it. People would go into a store and say, Ohhh . . .’ I’d say, ‘Nice wallet.
How much? Three ninety-five? No big deal.’ My mother got for Christmas a Hummel, my father got a Nautica jacket, Stefanie
got all of Bloomingdale’s. I would just go there and pick out the mannequins. I’d see a mannequin dressed in a girl’s clothes
and I’d tell the salesperson, ‘That mannequin there.’

“I was always tan. I used to take time out of my day to go to the tanning salon. At lunchtime I’d leave, take a cab, go to
the tanning salon, and come back. Facials. I’d get a face masque and stuff. Why not? Take the dirt out. Really deep-cleanse
it. Barbershop once a week. I got my eyebrows waxed. Used to go to a salon, Hermitage. A men’s salon. I’d go there and all
in one day get a massage, manicure, facial, eyebrows, haircut. Never did that before.

“I used to get a massage up on 38th Street, and I’d have Sally Leads shoot up to Bloomingdale’s and buy an outfit to wear
to go out that night. This happened every other day. I wouldn’t even wash the clothes. I was too lazy to take them to the
wash. I didn’t like them after a week. Didn’t want to wear them no more. I’d buy new ones. It was irrational. Normal people
would just take their clothes and wash them. But if I have to go home and wash them, I go, ‘Nah, I don’t want to do that.
I need a new outfit. It’s shit. Sucks. Fuck it.’ Half the shit I bought I wouldn’t wear.”

“The money and the possessions were so important to him because they really did boost his self-esteem,” said Stefanie. “He
didn’t have any. For him, I think, the money was self-worth. If he had no money, he was worth nothing. He wasn’t a good enough
person.

“He put too much of a value on the dollar. When he started work, he decided to become a big shot. All of a sudden all these
people were coming out of the woodwork. Even the people he met. Who are these people? They weren’t his friends. Two months
ago he was nothing. Now we’re treating them to dinner, buying them drinks. Taking them out. I would say to him, ‘What happens
when the money runs dry? Are they still going to be here? These aren’t your friends. Your friends are the people you grew
up with. If they’re your friends they shouldn’t be freeloading.’ I think he didn’t care as long as he had a lot of people
who were interested in him, to hang out with him.”

In the back of his mind, Louis knew that people were using him, maybe, just a little. But he didn’t care. There was plenty
of money to go around. Plenty for everybody, forever.

When Benny brought a large, heavyset man named Frank Coppa up to A. T. Brod a few months after they started working there,
it was a pain in the ass. Louis hated when strangers came by to visit.

Coppa met with Benny in the office alone. Louis was asked to leave. He hated it. There was nothing he hated more than being
asked to leave somewhere.

So he went downstairs, down by Battery Park. He smoked for a while. Looked at the girls. Then he came back up and they were
still talking. The door was closed. Frank was doing most of the talking. He was gesturing with his large, ham-sized hands.
It went on for an hour and a half. Louis was sitting outside, in the boardroom, smoking. Excluded.

“It was so annoying,” said Louis. “Then I called Benny on his extension and I said, ‘Listen, what do you want me to do here?
I got work to do, you know.’ And he says, ‘I don’t know.’

“Frank was sitting in my chair. He was a big guy. About six-two, maybe two hundred and eighty pounds. Humongous. So he’s sitting
there, and they were talking about this great deal that Frank has and how we’re going to raise lots of money. It was going
to be the next fucking Mickey D’s.

“At that time I didn’t really know who he was. Benny didn’t introduce me to him. Then, after he left, as he was walking out,
he said, ‘Louie, this is the guy who shook me down and took my ’Vette.’”

Frank sat in Louis’s seat with comfort, regally, because he was at home. Frank had always been at home in brokerages, no matter
where they were located—New Jersey, Long Island, or Manhattan. He was working with stocks and brokers as far back as the 1970s,
and in 1979 he was convicted by the feds for his role in a stock deal involving a company called Tucker Drilling. Oil stocks
were the dot.coms of the 1970s. People wanted to buy hot stocks. So Frank and his crew got oil company stock that was nearly
worthless and gave brokers cash, under the table, to sell the stock to the public at high prices. “Cash deals.”

Frank was back in the stock business by the late 1980s, only this time he was more careful and didn’t get caught. When the
feds sent him to prison in 1992 for tax evasion, it was for something entirely unrelated to Wall Street. In fact, it was such
a bullshit thing that it got very little publicity at the time. He was accused of concealing income he got in the early 1980s
from a school bus company that was controlled by members of his family. It was called My Three Sons, as in the 1960s TV series.

The name was more than a homage to Fred MacMurray. Frank actually had three sons. One became a doctor. The others, Frank Junior
and Michael, stayed close to their father and went into business. The school bus business.

Frank got out of school buses after that and switched to chicken. Chicken restaurants. Chain restaurants, including a hot
IPO called Boston Chicken, were serious stock plays at the time. That’s why he had stopped by to see Benny. Chicken was the
subject of conversation, a chain of fast-food chicken restaurants Frank’s family ran called Chic-Chick. The way Frank talked
about it that day at A. T Brod, you’d think it was the greatest thing since God created the school bus leasing contract.