Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (43 page)

Louis is careful. He takes precautions to assure his safety. The Guy world is weaker than it ever has been—but it still exists.
It’s dying, it’s on the ropes, the good guys have won. Blah blah blah. But it will never go away. Guys will kill when provoked,
such as the time in October 1999 when two stock promoters, Alan Chalem and Maier Lehmann, were shot dead in Colts Neck, New
Jersey. It made front-page headlines at the time. The Mob was on Wall Street. Imagine that.

Louis knew Alan slightly. Alan once offered him a job. He had no idea why the two guys were killed. Maybe they reneged on
a debt.

To the Guys who used to run his life, Louis reneged on a debt too. He owed them his life. It was his life, and he has taken
it back.

It was his last score.

*
Despite repeated requests, the NASD would not make its staffers available to discuss its oversight of Hanover and other chop
houses during the 1990s.

*
Brokers sold stocks, of course. But since they had to technically buy them from the firm, their ability to sell stocks was
referred to, counterintuitively, as “buying power.”

*
A few years later, while working at another chop house, Peter Cohen tried another way to move up to a better grade of Rolex.
In 1999 he was indicted for insider trading involving advance copies of
Business Week’s
“Inside Wall Street” stock market column. He pleaded guilty to one felony count. In September 2002 he was sentenced to 30
days probation. The sales-maven-insider-trader Peter Cohen, by the way, should not be confused with the Peter Cohen who was
chairman of Shearson in the 1980s.

*
Years later, Taneja acknowledged meeting with Louis and Benny, and having them as guests at his home, but said he was rarely
in New York and denied knowledge of any wrongdoing at the New York office of Brod.

*
Kemper Securities “cleared” trades for A. T. Brod—executing trades and issuing statements and other routine paperwork. Kemper
also physically maintained the customer accounts.

*
The NYSE and other regulators did not implicate Taneja in any wrongdoing. But Brod didn’t exactly get any medals from the
NYSE. In a disciplinary action announced two years after Brod went out of business, the NYSE permanently banned Brod from
the exchange. (Brod was long defunct, so this was a largely symbolic act.) The NYSE found that Brod had committed multiple
violations of exchange rules. Among other things, the NYSE disciplinary panel made note of the wooden tickets Louis wrote
in March 1995, said that “unauthorized staff had the ability to enter the trading room during the relevant period,” and that
“firm procedures were inadequate to detect or prevent misconduct in connection with execution of orders.” The decision was
silent on whether or not the brokers were owed any money by Brod.

*
Sonny was sent back to jail in 1998, again for parole violation, and again for associating with Guys. One of them was Lenny
Dello, Sr., Charlie’s former skipper. Small world.

*
The feds disagree. In court papers during his various scrapes with the law, Frank has been identified as a Bonanno family
skipper—a “capo”—and not as an underboss.

*
“Joe Butch” Corrao, a skipper in the Gambino family, had just begun a stretch in federal prison for racketeering. His son
has been identified by law enforcement as a Gambino soldier.

*
Sciandra, identified in court papers as a Gambino skipper, was an official of Top Tomato, a grocery chain in Brooklyn and
Staten Island.

*
It was an arbitration, actually—this time, a Real Wall Street arbitration, filed with the NASD. Louis ignored it and Lawrence
won by default.

*
John Hing remembers Louis and Saretsky, but denies that they worked there or ever did more than “visit” U.S. Securities.
Hing also denies Louis’s account of an offer by Saretsky, or that gangsters congregated at the firm because of the Waco deal.
He remembers a “Sean Dunleavy,” but says someone else handled his complaint. Subsequent federal charges support Louis, and
contradict Hing, by saying that Louis did indeed work at U.S. Securities and sold Waco stock there.

*
The owner of the Doo-Wop Shoppe, who declined to disclose his full name, hotly denied that his establishment was ever patronized
by loan sharks or other unsavory personages.

*
Shannon Johnson was never implicated in any wrongdoing in connection with these events or the other work that he did for
Louis and his friends.

*
The New Jersey conviction still wasn’t on his NASD record—or in his Justice Department file, for that matter—years later.
The reason could have been a screwup by Hudson County court personnel. Louis’s name was misspelled as “Pascuito” in the court
records, and the mistake wasn’t caught even after motion papers filed by his lawyer spelled his name correctly.

*
Louis never found out why his offer to cooperate was ignored by the FBI’s Newark office. When he told John Brosnan, the FBI
agent handling his case, “he just laughed,” said Louis.

*
Interestingly, Stefanie was never questioned by authorities, even when Scott’s principals were indicted in mid-2000.

*
That is, an offering of under $1 million in securities under SEC Rule 504. The rule was aimed at helping small companies
get their stock on the market, and was often used to bring chop stocks before the investing public.

*
The criminal charges later brought against Louis, however, say that Louis was “working at” Aaron Capital and sold Aaron’s
house stock, Matco. Louis, who was not involved in setting up the office, says it is possible that it wasn’t an officially
sanctioned Aaron office. Aaron itself was not able to shed any more light on the subject. Gordon was no longer an official
of Aaron, and the firm’s NASD-listed phone number was disconnected.

*
Neither Frank Junior nor Chic-Chick were implicated in any wrongdoing.

**
Larry pleaded guilty. He had not been sentenced as this book went to press. Todd pleaded not guilty and was awaiting trial.