Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street Read online

  Things were simple now. Illusions were out the window.

  Louis was taking money from his customers in return for nothing, and Charlie was no longer making believe that he was doing anything for Louis in return for his money. He was collecting a debt that Louis owed him—Louis’s existence on the planet—and Louis was going to be paying for the rest of his life.

  “After Aaron I didn’t care no more,” said Louis. “I was getting wise with him. I used to just totally irritate him. I used to know exactly how to tick him off. He’d say, ‘I’m coming to your house.’ I’d know if I said, ‘No, Charlie don’t come!’—he’d back off. But I didn’t say that no more.

  “I’d say, ‘You come here, it’s not going to get me to Brooklyn any faster. In fact, it would be better off if you came here. If you come here I don’t have the money, and if you come to Brooklyn I don’t have the money, and I’m not leaving my fucking house. So if you want to come here, I’m here.’ He’d say, ‘You’re therrrrrre! You’re therrrrrrrrrrre!’ I’d say, ‘Right here. I don’t know why you’re yelling about it.’ I’d be a wiseass. I just didn’t care no more. I’d hear the phone dropping on the floor. I could see him foaming at the mouth.

  “I’d just tease him now. I’d say, ‘Charlie, you’re getting crazy for no reason. You’re really going to make your blood pressure go up, pal. You shouldn’t be acting like this. You’re a grown man.’ That’s what I used to say to him.”

  It was a game of chicken. They were both rushing to the edge of the cliff. One of them was going to have to jump.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “According to our most recent investor survey we have determined that everyone who possesses the knowledge and the wherewithal would like to take advantage of the many opportunities that are currently available in this industry. We believe this creates a desire for our primary service which is finding top quality companies in targeted industries.”

  —from the private placement

  memorandum of United Capital Consulting

  Corporation, dated July 15, 1999

  It went on like that for six pages, single-spaced, describing what United Capital was going to do for its investors. It was so good. There was a little problem in the section describing key executives. Louis had to tell a little white lie and say he “graduated” from the College of Staten Island, and he inflated his position a tad from unregistered cold-caller to “investment banker with Hanover Sterling.” Louis figured that nobody would have paid much attention to the indictments of Hanover principles, which were all over the papers. But this much was true: “Following a successful stay at Hanover he went on to build such small cap firms as AT Broad [sic], Nationwide Securities and has successfully placed and participated in 20 successful IPOs.” He certainly built those firms, though he did have to take down Brod as well as build it up. But nobody would know about that.

  Nicholas Pasciuto, “managing director of international and U.S. manufacturing at Hudson printing for ten years,” was down as vice president. Once again, Nick was letting Louis use his name, figuring that this time Louis was getting into business for himself, a legit business, and would finally pull himself up by his bootstraps.

  By the summer of 1999, Stefanie was trying to reconcile with Louis—and reconcile the Louis of 1999 with the Louis she’d known years ago, the skinny kid at the gas station. Stefanie was facing reality now—the reality of Louis, and the reality of the world in which he and she were living.

  Louis was making promises now. He admitted stuff too. He had problems. They were fixable. He would change. Lynyrd Skynrd—fuck them. This bird you can change.

  She believed him. She went back to him in time to see him off to Arizona for his meeting with Joe Welch. At last, a legitimate moneymaking opportunity.

  The blackjack cracked Louis on the skull. Louis leaped out of the car and ran onto Fingerboard Road, toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Louis didn’t know where he was going. Maybe he would head to the bridge. Maybe he would jump off it.

  He owed $5,000 to John and Jeff, the kids who had watched him for a day while Mergen and Richie looted his storage unit. He had started gambling with them. No hard feelings. That is, no hard feelings so long as he paid what he owed. He now owed $5,000. That seemed to be the magic number—$5,000—the threshold that got Guys to haul out their blackjacks. John and Jeff had taken him for a ride in their car, and the blackjack was their way of commencing the discussion.

  Blackjacks are venerable methods of nonverbal communication. They are black, leather-covered, flexible devices, typically filled with lead or some other heavy substance. Blackjacks can be easily concealed in a jacket pocket. They were formerly the standard equipment of New York City police detectives and other plainclothes police, but had fallen out of favor over the years, to be replaced by a flexible metal rod called the asp. But blackjacks were still available for purchase on Staten Island and over the Internet, and they still worked well, as evidenced by the tiny droplets of blood Louis was leaving on Fingerboard Road.

  It was early October 1999. United Capital had lived up to his expectations, grossing $360,000, of which $100,000 went to Charlie. The remainder, of course, went to the bookies, to satisfy previous indebtedness and finance further wagers. All told, Louis was short $5,000, hence the car ride and the blackjack usage.

  “Jeff holds back and John’s right behind me. There’s people all over the place. People on the bus stop. I see a door open and I run into some lady’s house. Some Chinese lady on the corner of Fingerboard and the service road. I was bleeding. I run in, and this Chinese lady is flipping out. I slam the door and lock it. She’s yelling, ‘Nooooo!’ I say, ‘Calm down.’ I say, ‘Somebody just jumped me.’ She goes, ‘Get out!’ She goes to open the door. I say, ‘What, are you fucking nuts, lady? They’re right outside.’ So these kids go into the backyard and try to get into the back door. I had to lock the back door. And this lady is flipping out. ‘Get out of my house!’ I go, ‘Shut the fuck up. Call the cops. Tell them you’re getting robbed.’”

  The police arrived.

  “I try to walk over and talk to them. They go, ‘Hands up!’ I go, ‘Listen, you don’t understand.’ The cop that was there happened to be a friend of mine I went to high school with. He went, ‘What happened?’ I told him I was waiting for the bus, two guys jumped out and beat me up. I went to the hospital. The white of my eye was ripped. I looked like the Elephant Man for a few days.”

  He had to pay these kids back their $5,000. So when he got the checks in his hands, he had to cash them. It was that simple. He had done it before. He knew how. It would have to go better this time, not that he cared much one way or the other if it didn’t.

  A stock deal had fallen through, and checks were going back to the customers. One of the checks was for $7,500, and the other was for $25,000. Real money, just like the money he used to get in the paper bags on Tuesdays.

  His friend Rich Dacunto knew a friend at a check-cashing place who would cash the checks for them. On October 13, 1999, Louis and Rich went to United Check Cashing in Carteret, New Jersey, cashed the checks, and walked away. No cops this time.

  The only problem was that the checks were from a Ralph Torrelli stock deal.

  part six

  ESCAPE

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Ralph was annoyed, very, very annoyed, about the checks. And Charlie was furious, even though he took most of Louis’s share of the proceeds. Charlie insisted that Louis pay back to Ralph the money he stole from the clients—without deducting what he had paid Charlie. It was a kind of penalty for stealing.

  Charlie was taking a minimum of $12,000 a month, no matter what Louis was making. By now that meant Louis was paying up to 80 percent of his monthly income to Charlie. He was almost twenty-six years old. He had a wife and a child. He was a man. And here he was, getting belted around, and giving away most of his money. One day a note appeared in his mailbox.

  YOU CAN’T ESCAPE

  Charlie denied
he sent it. Louis figured it didn’t matter. Charlie, Joe Botch, John or Jeff, or somebody else he had pissed off—what difference did it make?

  The note raised a good point, though. He had to escape.

  He made the decision on the sidewalk in front of Lundy’s. That’s a restaurant on Sheepshead Bay. It was a cool, clear, crisp day, sunny and windy. You could practically see all the way up to Canarsie Pier.

  The seagulls were floating lazily overhead when he saw Charlie approaching. Louis was leaning against the railing, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the small bay, with Manhattan Beach beyond. It was a weekday and the street was clear. The fishing boats were docked, but no one was hawking fresh-caught bluefish in little tubs on the sidewalk. Damn, was it a great day. It had gotten to the point that Louis couldn’t enjoy a day like this anymore.

  Charlie was supposed to get $7,000. Louis had $6,000.

  “Walk this way,” Charlie said. He was in a windbreaker and cap. Slumming.

  “Do you have the money?”

  Louis gave it to him.

  “I’ll have the rest in a couple of days.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “All right, tomorrow.”

  Charlie walked away without saying a word.

  Louis called out after him.

  “You’re welcome, Charlie. Don’t worry about it.”

  Charlie didn’t react.

  “You want some clams? They should be on you. I’ll treat you if you want.”

  He kept walking.

  “Thanks. I’ll come here anytime you want. Bring you money. No problem. I’ll be right here. Sitting right here tomorrow. Take care.”

  Charlie kept walking.

  Louis watched as Charlie walked away, toward Brighton Beach. Soon people came between them and he lost sight of Charlie, with that bouncy walk of his. He watched after him and suddenly his eyes were filled with tears, and he was thinking thoughts he couldn’t control.

  “This is the last time I’m giving that motherfucker a penny,” Louis said to himself, over and over again. When he stopped the thought, it came back again, unchanged. He had no second thoughts.

  Louis went back to where he parked his car. He didn’t have the truck anymore. He had a Toyota Camry. A nice car. Better for traveling with the baby. Solid, dependable, but nothing fancy. Reasonably priced but still expensive—$400 a month. He got into the car and went home.

  He never saw Charlie again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Louis had never written a rÉsumÉ. That involved planning, which he didn’t do. Now, right before him in black and white, there it was. The United States government had drafted it for him, and it was not the kind of curriculum vitae that most employers would embrace.

  Count One was Conspiracy to Commit Mail, Wire, and Securities Fraud. Counts Two and Three were Securities Fraud. The entire document was fourteen pages long and signed by Mary Jo White. There were so many firms, so many stocks and scams, that they were broken out in a chart, a spreadsheet of crime, beginning with Hanover and ending with United Capital.

  It was not so much a criminal complaint, or even a rÉsumÉ, as it was the broad outlines of a life.

  Louis pleaded guilty to his rÉsumÉ, and his life, a few days before the end of the millennium. He then went to work. The FBI kept him busy.

  Late in 1999 and early in 2000, Louis paid visits to his old friends and acquaintances on the Street. He just materialized out of nowhere. It had to be nowhere, because Louis assumed that Charlie and John and Jeff were looking for him. John certainly was. He rang the doorbell of his parents’ house. Louis wasn’t home at the time.

  If anybody wanted to know what Louis was up to, all he had to do was go to the federal courthouse on Pearl Street.

  Although the multicount “rÉsumÉ” indictment was sealed, the one-count criminal complaint that was filed against Louis on the day he was arrested, October 20, was right in the files. A check of the courthouse computer would have found an entry for December 20: “ORDER as to Louis Pasciuto, dismissing.” Why were the charges suddenly tossed out?

  It’s a good bet that no one ever bothered looking there. So much for the vaunted ability of Guys to ferret out secrets.

  Louis signed a cooperation agreement in which the government pledged to make its best efforts to put him in the federal Witness Protection Program. But first Louis had a bit of work to do.

  January 21, 2000, was a freezing cold day. FBI agents John Brosnan and Kevin Barrows picked him up at noon. They put a tape recorder in his Frye boot—it was a microcassette job but sizable, uncomfortable. They pulled the wire up the leg of his jeans and taped two microphones to his stomach, just above the belt. In his jacket pocket they placed a transmitter that would radio the conversations to the van. Then they drove to Manhattan. The idea would be for Louis to set up shop at a chop house and open accounts for his “customers”—federal agents. He would sell them stocks and get paid by the firm in cash, just as he had so many times before, only this time it would all go down on tape. Then he would go away and the feds would come in, eventually, and bust the firm for the cash deal.

  His first stop was a firm in Staten Island. But it was a no-go. He had a friend there who knew him, and he wasn’t in. Louis went back in the van and shut the tape off. They drove to another firm.

  Louis had been at this firm twice before in the preceding few weeks, but never managed to talk to the right people. He was irritated that the feds had strung out the visits. “I kept on explaining to them that if I go there on a Monday I have to go back on Tuesday,” said Louis. “They know I’m not the type of kid to wait a week to go back somewhere. If they tell me they’re going to pay me cash, I’m going to do it right away.”

  When Louis got there, he immediately saw that things weren’t right. “This guy Jackie is there. He motions to me from his office—‘I want to talk to you.’”

  Louis felt the microphones cold on his skin and his stomach juices started churning. “I’m really nervous. I don’t know this guy Jackie, so why does he want to talk to me? Nobody’s expecting me. What’s going on?”

  “I go into his office,” said Louis, “and he says, ‘I know you’re a big broker. I know you raise a lot of money. But I made a couple of phone calls and somebody told me not to deal with you. You’re shady.’” At that point two large men walked into the office and closed the door.

  “You do scandalous shit,” Jackie said.

  “I thought by shady that he meant I’m a rat,” said Louis. “My stomach is in my feet. I’m in the back office of this guy’s fucking place! I could be killed. The two guys were monsters. Italians. Bodybuilders. The two guys just stood there and listened. Said nothing. I got defensive. ‘What are you telling me? What do you mean, scandalous?’”

  Jackie explained that by scandalous he meant “‘the way you sell stock.’ So he starts to explain I’m a cowboy on the phone. He says, ‘You take it to the next level of lying.’”

  Louis could relax now. The rest of the conversation was good. Pretty damn good. This firm was offering Louis a 50 percent payout, meaning that he got to keep half the money he was getting from customers.

  Money. That was what the man said.

  Being a cooperator sucked.

  For weeks, Louis had been living in other people’s apartments and subsisting on other people’s money. It was humiliating. Ridiculous. Sure, it was better than jail. But all the bullshit about witnesses being paid by the feds was a crock. At least, it was a crock as far as Louis was concerned. Maybe he just didn’t get a good deal. Or maybe he was lucky not to be in jail.

  But none of that mattered now. Here it was. The goddamn millennium year. Chop houses were supposed to be dead. They had dropped out of the headlines. But here they were. Still operating. And here he was, wearing this stupid wire.

  Jackie was promising cash. It was all Louis had lived for. And now he had none.

  He felt like going into the bathroom and ripping out the fucking transmitter, sitting down
and making calls. Just a couple. He could say the transmitter malfunctioned, or something. Then he could come back and get the cash.

  It would mean going back to the old days, and the old days weren’t over. They would never be over.

  Louis thought about it while Jackie talked.

  He had heard enough. He could have kept the conversation going, but it wasn’t necessary. Brosnan and Barrows would have enough. They would be happy. He went out on the street, turned a corner, turned another corner, and climbed into the van.

  epilogue

  Shortly after seven-thirty in the evening of June 14, 2000, Charlie Ricottone was led into Courtroom 5A, 500 Pearl Street, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Charlie appeared in court unshaven, jail-ready in a pale gray sweatshirt, scuffed Nikes, and blue jeans. He was tan. His bald spot was undisguised, lest the communal shower result in an embarrassing mascara-like run. He entered the courtroom with difficulty because he was chained hand and foot, as were the other defendants who were led into the courtroom with him. It was a routine procedure, enforced by the burly U.S. marshals who were everywhere.

  Earlier in the day, Mary Jo White had proven that she was no do-nothing Otto Obermaier. In a packed press conference that made headlines around the world, White announced the biggest securities bust in recent memory. A total of 120 defendants, Charlie among them, were arrested by FBI agents around the country.

  Louis had supplied information for three of the courtroom minuets that Mary Jo White had choreographed that day, and others that were still in rehearsals but would soon have their premieres. In addition to nailing Charlie, Louis had helped the feds build a case against a three-man crew that was running a private placement scam Louis had worked in 1999, involving a Staten Island gym called Future Fitness. Louis also had furnished information leading to the roundup of the First Fidelity crew. All eighteen of them were led into the courtroom, as Charlie was, bound hand and foot. In all, Louis had helped the feds in cases that were brought against 22 of the 120 Guys and brokers who were paraded before the TV cameras on that day.