Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (42 page)

Roy was in fine form. He was manicured, confident, his slightly simian head topped with an expensive haircut, his stocky features
encased in a tasteful gray suit. In recent years he had been an investor in Hollywood productions, and had even appeared in
small acting roles a few times. He knew how to hold an audience. But he was producing this show for one man—and Judge Dearie
was a tough crowd.

It would take the sales presentation of a lifetime to get his sentence held to a minimum.

Roy’s pitch lasted into the afternoon.

A young cousin testified that Roy was “my second dad.”

A doctor testified that lengthy incarceration would impose a hardship on the Ageloff family, even though Roy was divorced.

Roy’s lawyer said Roy was such a devoted parent that he would not curse in front of his children.

The head of an AIDS foundation, a recent beneficiary of Roy’s largesse, testified that Roy was a “compassionate, caring individual.”
Roy became so compassionate (after his guilty plea) that he had volunteered to supervise counselors at a camp for kids with
AIDS. He was due at the camp that very day.

His ex-wife testified that Roy loved his children, and vice versa. Under cross-examination, she denied questions implying
that Roy had sometimes hit her. “I probably hit Roy and in the process got hurt,” she said.

Roy stood directly before the judge. Dignified. No hard sell. “I would like to say how sorry I am and how much I regret what
took place based upon greed, stupidity in my life,” he said.

The judge listened, his face immobile. He was impressed, he said. Moved, he said.

But he wasn’t buying what Roy was selling.

Roy certainly loved his children, but there were other kids who weighed more heavily on Dearie’s mind:

“This sentence sort of brings to mind all of the young folks—and, granted they got on the bandwagon too and they saw the easy
money. But I saw so many young men, many with barely a high school education, who got on that sort of gravy train, full of
excitement, full of fast money, whose careers, certainly in the securities field, are ruined, that you had a hand in leading
astray.

“I think you have to understand that there are some real victims here. Not only the people who lost the money—they line up
by the scores—but you’ve got to take some responsibility, in my view of it at least, for some of those younger people who
were here.”

Judge Dearie refused to cut Roy’s sentence because of his family obligations and philanthropy. He sentenced Roy to eight years
in prison, and to pay $8 million in restitution.

Roy’s lawyer pleaded to give Roy a few weeks to say goodbye to his children. Roy apparently expected this request would be
granted, because his burly black bodyguard was waiting, hands clamped behind him, right outside the courtroom doors.

Judge Dearie wanted Roy in jail now. “Defendant is remanded,” he barked. As his relatives cried, the marshals swiftly cuffed
Roy’s hands behind his back and led him to a door at the far corner of the courtroom.

Roy’s composure wavered. He gave a quick look toward his family as they led him away.

Benny and Marco weren’t part of the June 2000 festivities. But Louis knew their day was coming. He was going to see to that.
He had no choice. You had to go all the way when you were a cooperator, just as you couldn’t be a little bit pregnant.

Throughout 2000, Louis had been giving the FBI, NASD, and SEC information on Nationwide as well as the other firms where he’d
worked. It was only a matter of time before the feds acted. On December 12, 2000, the inevitable happened. A five-count indictment
by the Manhattan feds. The list of names in the indictment was headed by Benny and Marco, and included his old associate Tommy
Deceglie, who had lost the Elmo arbitration, Sonny’s guys Howie Zelin and Glenn Benussi, Louis’s pals Frank Piscitelli and
Dave Lavender, and, sadly as far as Louis was concerned, Charlie’s brother Mike Ricottone. Mike had gotten a job as a cold-caller
and had made very little money at Nationwide. “They just put him there to get at Charlie,” Louis said. The feds fought dirty.

The guilty pleas for the Nationwide crew began in August

2001. Howie, Dave, Tommy, Frank. Kid brother Mike. Marco.

Benny.

When Louis heard about Benny’s guilty plea to two securities fraud counts, on August 13, 2001, he felt a pang. Relief that
he would not have to face his old friend in court. And that familiar old feeling, the one that he had ignored for so many
years.

He could live with it. He had no choice.

On June 4, 2002, Marco was sentenced to fifty-one months in prison by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Appearing before the same judge
three weeks later, Benny received a forty-nine-month sentence. He was ordered to undergo substance-abuse treatment while in
prison.

Louis had no role in Benny’s other legal troubles. Benny was arrested again by the feds, in May 2001, for his alleged involvement
in a Brooklyn drug ring after he left the Street. Benny pleaded not guilty, and the charges were pending as this book went
to press.

Drugs also proved a heavy burden, in every sense of the word, for Robert Luciano, the gold-shop proprietor who was involved
in Louis’s fence-jumping incident. In 2000 he was nabbed by the feds for importing a tractor-trailer load of marijuana. By
then, the gold shop had morphed into an Italian ices stand.

Louis never had to face Charlie in court. On November 29, 2001, Charlie pleaded guilty to reduced charges in the June 2000
case and the subsequent gambling indictment. He was sentenced on April 16, 2002.

Charlie’s family and friends were not in the courtroom. John Brosnan, blond and lanky, dressed in a polo shirt and khaki pants,
lounged at the prosecution table, impassive, as Michael Rosen put his case before Judge Glasser, who was gaunt and scowling
and faintly resembled Martin Landau in

the role of Bela Lugosi. Brosnan’s blank-faced partner Kevin Barrows, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, was in the very rear of
the almost empty courtroom. An elderly man sat in front of him.

Charlie was deeply tanned, wearing a white shirt and black pants. His hair was close-cropped. His hands twisted nervously
behind him as his lawyer argued and Glasser occasionally made a biting and unsympathetic rejoinder. A tough judge. Retribution
time. Chickens coming home to roost.

Much discussion of the dispute at the Canarsie pier ten years before. The altercation. The police officer’s sprained thumb.

The threat to the prosecutor back then.

No, it was not at all humorous, Rosen readily conceded. But no, it would be so unfair, so unjust, so
disproportionate
for that little brawl on a pier to result in declaring Charlie a three-time loser, a career criminal, thereby justifying
a much higher sentence under the federal incarceration guidelines.

Judge Glasser was unmoved, rigid. “A legal argument of a very shallow order,” he said at one point, driving a stake through
one of Rosen’s arguments. Rosen persisted. That 1992 pier brawl, that drunken expression of unleashed Guy bravado, “should
not be the fulcrum that makes this the third strike” and converts Charlie from a mere multiple offender into a career criminal.

Not with all that he had done, all that he had strived to do, all the people he had touched so very positively. The young
lady who had written the judge a letter saying that Charlie had saved her from a life of drugs. The young man, now a high
school football quarterback, who had nothing but good things to say about Charlie. The senior citizen, the one in the back
of the courtroom, who was ready to get up in court and tell the judge, right to his face, all of the things that Charles Ricottone
had done for the people of Brooklyn. Positive things.

Rosen continued to plead for his client.

He is a decent person. He has a checkered and regrettable past. He has made some disastrous choices, but he is a school volunteer
now. He does give back. He works with children. “That should be a plus,” said Rosen.

Charlie spoke. His hands were behind his back, and he wore glasses now, and his stocky build and tieless white shirt/black
pants combo gave him the fleeting appearance of a cross between Al Jolson and a waiter.

“I deeply regret the life that I have chose,” said Charlie. Not that he wanted to make any excuses for his behavior. Given
a chance he would lead a life that would be productive for himself and his family. He did apologize for his actions. If he
could take them back he could. He never seemed to make the right choices.

He stopped. Time for sentencing from a judge whose glower seemed capable of reducing the hardest Guy into a quivering mess.

The judge began by very slowly expounding upon the definition of assault. This had some bearing on whether Charlie’s 1992
thumb-spraining altercation could count toward him being declared a career criminal. Causing a physical injury would put Charlie
over the top.

The judge read several definitions of physical injury. A sprained thumb didn’t appear to fit the definition. But it didn’t
matter. Judges have discretion and this was one angry judge. He had seen so many defendants, people like Charlie, stand before
him as their lawyers read letters saying what wonderful people they were. But this judge saw through all that. The people
who wrote those letters had no idea of the other side of the defendants’ lives. Judge Glasser did. He saw right through Charlie
like an X ray.

“You beat people up. That’s what you do. That’s what loan sharks do.” He wasn’t buying a thing. Rosen might just as well have
saved his breath. And so it seemed, right up to the moment the judge said he was not designating Charlie as a career criminal,
and was sentencing him to four years in prison.

Then came a tongue-lashing. Charlie might not be a career criminal, but if he was not going to get a heavy sentence he was
certainly going to get some pretty heavy words thrown at him, to shame him in front of the assembled lawyers and FBI agents
and court clerks.

“Let me tell you, Mr. Ricottone. In some respects you are pretty lucky, because you’ve been standing before judges for the
greater part of your life, and every time you appear before a judge you make the same speech … I want to tell you that if
you half believe the things you say, you might want to give consideration. …”

The judge went on in that vein for a while. A tough speech from a tough judge. Maybe Charlie listened and maybe he didn’t.
He had heard it before, and he would probably hear it again.

Charlie was remanded to custody immediately. That had been a big problem for Roy Ageloff. Not Charlie. He didn’t care. He
could do the time. He took off his bracelet and neck chain and gave it to the old man in the back of the courtroom.

Then he went to jail.

In the summer of 2002, Louis began reading the papers regularly for the first time in his life. There was plenty to read.
Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen. Wall Street analysts lying. Investigations. Indictments. Convictions. During his years in
the chop houses, Louis had always believed that he just wasn’t good enough—not polished enough, not well-educated enough—to
cross that unbridgeable gulf into the Real Wall Street. But now, as he read the papers, he knew he had been wrong. He’d been
in the Real Wall Street all the time.

Nothing in the papers about chop houses anymore. Not even the guilty pleas and sentences. So Louis didn’t feel that he was
missing out on anything, that if he hadn’t been caught

he could have kept up his old lifestyle. Louis was pretty sure of that until one day in July 2002, when he ran into an old
friend from Staten Island who was opening up a chop house in downtown Brooklyn.

He offered Louis a 30 percent payout. Cash.

Good money. Tempting. So painful to pass up.

This much was sure: Louis would always have temptations and he would always have to pass them up.

Louis’s life was very different now. He wasn’t always happy about it, but he was coping. The cars were gone; the expensive
restaurants and nights in the strip joints were a thing of the past. No more gambling, no more drugs. Stefanie saw to that.
Their relationship was still rocky at times, and they weren’t always together. But they were trying. They didn’t have much
choice in the matter. As 2001 gave way to 2002, Stefanie realized with a mixture of joy, surprise, and chagrin that she was
pregnant with their second child. Just as it was when Anthony was born five years earlier, the timing wasn’t terrific. Maybe
it was a message from—who knows? Louis was still an atheist. But he began to realize that nothing in his life was totally
under his control. He began to realize that maybe something more than pure chemical interaction placed Amanda Pasciuto on
this planet on August 4, 2002.

Now that he had a second kid, Louis knew that he couldn’t fuck up anymore. He had to focus on rebuilding his marriage and
being a father, and preparing for whatever the government might demand of him—whether that meant being a witness against his
former associates or serving time in prison for what he had done.

No more Guys meant no more torture, but it also meant no more clout. He would have to handle disputes himself. When a neighbor
was acting unreasonably, complaining about noises and making false claims of drug use, Louis for a moment missed the days
when a call to Charlie would have ended

that problem quickly. But when a friend wrote for him a strongly worded letter to the building management, something miraculous
happened. The problem ended. The neighbor apologized.

Louis made other discoveries in his new life. He found that if he collected the loose change that was left over at the end
of the day and put it in a jar, at the end of the month he had as much as $50. He would take the jar of loose change and bring
it to the bank, which would convert the coins into clean, fresh greenbacks. It was good money, fifty bucks. He would count
the bills fast, with his thumb, like a teller.

Louis knows people are looking for him. He knows because they have said so in their own special way. His sister was threatened.
His mother’s car was burned in their driveway. Nobody was hurt. That was the important thing. His mother called the police
when the car was torched. The FBI paid the suspected perpetrator a visit.