Nothing but Money_ How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street Part 5

At the pigeon club Frank Lino brought Robert into a waiting room on the first floor to sit and sweat with his fellow inductee, a guy everybody called Richie Sh.e.l.lac Head, a supervising pressman at the New York Post New York Post who was known as an earner, not a tough guy. Robert from Avenue U knew he was there under different circ.u.mstances. He was a capable guy. Everyone in the room downstairs knew he'd helped with the Tuzzio problem. who was known as an earner, not a tough guy. Robert from Avenue U knew he was there under different circ.u.mstances. He was a capable guy. Everyone in the room downstairs knew he'd helped with the Tuzzio problem.

This was a point of contention for some gangsters. John Gotti, for instance, favored capable guys. He didn't want to induct anybody into the family unless they had been involved in a piece of work, just like him. He and a number of the old-timers preferred tough guys to earners. Earners were like Sh.e.l.lac Head. He operated a major-league bookie ring at the New York Post New York Post, so he kicked up plenty of money. This was why he was being inducted. Not Robert Lino. Although he was extremely helpful in supporting his cousin, Frank, who was now his sponsor, he was also known as a capable guy.

Since the Tuzzio hit he'd been called upon to repeat his performance. This was the New Robert from Avenue U. From now on, he would be expected to do more than roll a guy up inside a rug. When a marijuana-dealing Bonanno a.s.sociate complained that some mope had come into his home, tied him up and threatened to kill his family unless he came up with cash, Robert Lino was put on the case. The marijuana dealer paid Robert $25,000 to kill Fat Sally, the mope he believed had terrorized his family. Robert and a friend found Fat Sally at his body shop in Brooklyn, but Fat Sally saw them coming and-despite his girth-managed to hide behind a tree. Lino took some shots but failed to hit his intended target, although he definitely hit the tree. Then it turned out Fat Sally wasn't involved in the home invasion after all, so now Robert had to go after another guy whose name he didn't know but who was the new suspect in the home invasion. Robert from Avenue U tried to kill him, too, but this guy wore a bulletproof vest. So far Robert hadn't experienced a lot of luck in the business of killing people, but he had made one thing quite clear-he was a capable guy.

First Robert was called downstairs. He entered the bas.e.m.e.nt and saw guys he'd known all his life. He was introduced by cousin Frank and was asked if he knew why he was there. He said no. They told him it was not a club, it was a secret society. They asked if he had any problem with any of the men in the room. He said no. They went through the burning saint and p.r.i.c.ked trigger finger. Robert Lino was a guy who appreciated ceremony. He believed it elevated the mundane, added a certain resonance to the everyday. There was history here. Legacy. Certainly he must have been appreciative of the fact that he was there in this bas.e.m.e.nt in Brooklyn partic.i.p.ating in this ceremony to fulfill his father's dream.

The skippers went through the rules of la cosa nostra la cosa nostra. Each one called out a different rule. Some made sense.

Never touch another made man without permission from the boss. Never sleep with a made man's wife or daughter. Always put your business on record with your captain. Soldiers can't talk with the administration about business; usually the consigliere deals with the captains about issues. You can't be introduced to another made man except by a made man. No stocks and bonds. That was an old rule, going back to the beginning. And so on. One rule in particular must have made Robert Lino cringe. The rule was "No drugs."

Everybody knew that Robert's father had been a major-league drug dealer, and that hadn't stopped the Bonanno crime family from welcoming him into its protective fold. Everybody knew Bobby Lino sold drugs that had nearly destroyed his own flesh and blood. He'd lost a son to drugs. His daughter was locked within the claustrophobic world of addiction. And here stood Robert Lino, nodding as a skipper said with a straight face, "No drugs," and everybody else in the room nodded in agreement, especially the guys who'd built second homes and bought nice cars and boats based on the income from narcotics.

In a world of criminals, how seriously could anyone take these rules? In this world, rules weren't really rules. They were more like guidelines. Suggestions. If you found a good reason to chuck them in the dustbin, if it was good for business or even just good for you, so be it. But you had to have rules. If you didn't, there was nothing but chaos and anarchy. You had to have rules and recite them so everybody knew what was what. When the reading of the rules was finished, all the men stood in a circle-the newly inducted Robert Lino and Richie Sh.e.l.lac Head-and they all held hands. They swore allegiance to this family-even over their blood family-and then the ceremony was over.

As his father had dreamed, Robert Lino was now a soldier in the Bonanno organized crime family, one of the five remaining Mafia families in America. No one could touch him without permission from the bosses. No one could bother his family. He could invoke the power of the Bonanno family name and reap its benefits, both financial and otherwise. He could make a living without doing a legitimate day's work. He was part of la famiglia la famiglia, and his timing was perfect.

As would soon be made clear, the 1990s would be very good for the Bonanno crime family. The government believed that the FBI agent pretending to be Donnie Brasco had delivered a knockout blow to the Bonanno family, so they focused their ample resources on the other four families. The plan was simple: the bosses of all the other families would soon go to prison. Most importantly, John Gotti had just been indicted again. And this time, there were all these tape recordings of the loudmouthed Gotti going on and on about killing this guy because he didn't come in when he was called and severing this guy's head just because and so on. Meanwhile the boss of the Genovese family, Vincent Gigante, was parading unshaven around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe, pretending to be a lunatic to avoid incarceration. This was hardly a way for a boss to behave. The Colombo family was shooting at each other in the streets, split down the middle by a disagreement over who should run the family while the boss, Carmine Persico, served a life term. And the Lucchese family was pretty much on its last legs, forced underground by its decision to try and kill the sister of an informant. Until the day they went after the sister, family members were off-limits. This constellation of events presented the Bonanno crime family with certain unique opportunities, and Robert Lino was in a perfect spot to benefit. The family had, in fact, survived the Brasco fiasco, and in truth, the FBI agent had not succeeded in bringing the family down. It was a temporary setback. With all the other families jammed up and the family boss, Joseph Ma.s.sino, ready to step out of jail, the Bonanno family-once kicked off the Mafia's commission for dealing drugs openly-was preparing for a big second act.

January 1991

When the decision comes down from corporate headquarters to clip somebody, it's important that the victim stay dead. Ideally that means burying a body so that the authorities never again find even a sc.r.a.p of the deceased. Bodies provide clues. Clues lead to prosecutions. Prosecutions lead to informants and then it all falls apart. Robert Lino knew that the ideal situation was to make sure the bodies stayed buried. Lately that had been a bit of a problem.

In recent months, the FBI had dredged up numerous missing persons. Sonny Black had floated to the surface in Staten Island. Sonny Red popped up in Queens. A former deputy commissioner at the city's Marine and Aviation Department showed up in the trunk of a car. A Sicilian hit man was found chopped up and stuffed inside several steel drums in New Jersey. Louis Tuzzio lay there inside the Camaro right on the streets of Brooklyn for the cops to find. Another guy turned up wrapped in a rug and left in the rear seat of his own truck parked at John F. Kennedy International Airport. There wasn't anything anybody could do about Sonny Black, or the Sicilian hit man, or Louis Tuzzio, or any of the rest of them. They were already government exhibit whatever. But there were others out there still.

For instance, there was Gabe Infanti, the guy who'd fallen out of favor and wound up in that weed-choked lot off Arthur Kill Road in Staten Island. So far Gabe had stayed dead. n.o.body had turned informant and brought him back to life. That is until Tommy Karate-a guy who had spent a lot of time digging holes in Staten Island in the middle of the night-got himself indicted.

No indictment scared the Bonanno family like that of Tommy Karate. Here was a guy involved in who knows how many pieces of work. Usually he personally did the shooting or stabbing or strangling, plus disposal in the bathtub. But he always did it because somebody told him to. Therefore he was a font of information for the FBI, and he'd been indicted on numerous murders and faced the death penalty. The Bonanno family immediately expected he'd turn informant, and then many a s.h.i.+p would be sunk. But if Tommy Karate told the FBI a body was buried at a certain spot and it wasn't, then the body didn't really exist, and Tommy might be seen not just as a s.a.d.i.s.tic killer but, even worse for the FBI, as a manipulative liar. Suddenly in the days after Tommy Karate's arrest, there were groups of gangsters with shovels gathered in remote sections of Brooklyn, Queens and especially Staten Island, digging furiously in the dark, trying to turn Tommy Karate into a liar.

For Robert Lino, this meant another frigid night on Arthur Kill Road. There he was again in January 1991, in the middle of bleak nowhere, Staten Island, by the fence company, looking for poor Gabe Infanti in the frozen weeds.

This time Robert Lino was a made man, a soldier in the Bonanno crime family. He now had his own crew of soldiers and reported to his cousin Frank. He was handling most of Frank's sports book and loan-shark collection, which provided a pretty steady stream of cash. Mostly he was interested in keeping a low profile. That was the most important thing. Look what was happening with Gotti. Here was a guy who openly taunted law enforcement, holding meetings with his crews right there on Mulberry Street, having dinner with actors, making the federal government and the city of New York look stupid with his fireworks out in Howard Beach. He liked being high-profile, and now he was in jail, indicted yet again, this time charged with killing his former boss, Paul Castellano. Sure he'd beaten three previous cases, but this one seemed different. This time there was a bug placed inside the guy's inner sanctum. This time it looked like John Gotti, the self-proclaimed boss of bosses, was on his way out.

That probably wasn't such a bad thing. The boss of the Bonanno family, Joseph Ma.s.sino, had openly courted Gotti's support. Everybody knew Ma.s.sino had met with Gotti the day before Castellano was shot dead outside Sparks Steak House on that chilly December evening in 1985. But now Gotti was likely to spend the rest of his life in jail, and the Bonanno family was in a position to take advantage of the expected void left behind.

That was the plan anyway, and it required an extremely low-profile approach. Most of the crew meetings had been stopped, and hardly anybody went to see the boss in prison while he served out his sentence. He would be out in three years and then the Bonanno family would probably be the only family in New York with a real boss-not an acting boss-on the street. Then they could come into their own.

Meanwhile, Robert Lino had to make sure the past-specifically Gabe Infanti-did not return to harm the plan. Tonight he was prepared. No more standing around in the frigid cold with buckets of lye and shovels. This time Robert Lino had brought along heavy machinery.

Actually it wasn't his. It belonged to a distant relative of the Lino family named Jimmy Labate. Labate was a heavyset redheaded guy with limited memory bank and a stunned expression who happened to have married to one of Robert Lino's cousins. It was tough to be friends with Jimmy. He had a bad reputation for borrowing money and then forgetting to pay it back. He fancied himself a tough guy. He wore knee-length leather jackets and carried a .38. He was a rugged-looking character with the face of a failed pugilist. His dad had been in construction and close to the Gambino family, so now Jimmy was put with a Gambino soldier named Johnny Gammarano-Johnny G. This Gambino soldier was a nasty guy who treated Jimmy poorly, so Jimmy was looking to jump to the Bonanno family. Robert was trying to help him with the transfer, but to date, Jimmy hadn't really ingratiated himself with the people who had the power to make that happen.

When Bobby Lino Sr. was alive, Jimmy Labate borrowed money from Bobby's partner in the pizza place, the Colombo gangster Nicky Black. He and Bobby had been partners forever, and it wasn't right for a relative of the Lino family to owe Nicky Black all this money. Jimmy, of course, was sure he'd be paying it back at any moment. He had grand plans. He was going to put some of it out on the street and pump the rest into the Staten Island construction business he'd inherited from his father. But construction in the late 1980s had fallen off, and Labate liked to gamble and got behind in his payments. It is one thing to get behind in your payments to Chase Manhattan Bank. They will cut off your credit and try to seize your house. But to stiff Nicky Black would be to willfully invite physical harm upon yourself. Robert's father, Bobby, became responsible for collecting the debt, bit by bit, from Jimmy and bringing the money to Nicky Black. This was how Robert Lino got to know Jimmy Labate, debtor extraordinaire.

On this night, Jimmy was making up for all his sins. He could handle heavy machinery, and he was doing a competent job with a bulldozer, chipping away at the frozen Staten Island dirt in the frantic search for the late Gabe Infanti. Robert and cousin Frank had pulled up twenty minutes into the job and now sat inside a sedan with the heater on full blast watching as scoop by scoop of potential Gabe was dumped into the back of a dump truck.

One of the guys who was there the night they first buried Gabe had returned to the scene of the crime. It was Ronnie, and he was supposed to help remember where they'd planted Gabe. Ronnie couldn't remember. n.o.body could remember. It had been years, and the actual digging and dumping had occurred in the middle of the night. It wasn't like somebody had some sort of Treasure Island map with a big X to mark Gabe. Everything looked the same and everything looked different. Gabe could be anywhere. Some of the landmarks that were familiar the night they buried Gabe-abandoned cars in the weeds, some Jersey barriers-were gone. It was possible they were completely turned around and digging yards away from where Gabe lurked. The guy Ronnie scanned the dirt like a scout, looking for who knows what. Gabe's bones? Gabe's Rolex? Who knew what would be left of poor Gabe four years later with the lye and everything.

Sitting in the car watching all this, cousin Frank made it clear he was unhappy to see Jimmy Labate and another guy n.o.body knew with the truck. Robert admitted he didn't really know the guy with the truck either, but he told Frank he was pretty sure the guy had no clue about what was really going on here. Cousin Frank had to wonder about this. What did the guy think they were doing out here in the middle of the night?

"Why did you bring this guy Labate?" Frank asked. He did not like Jimmy, mostly because of the Nicky Black problem but also because of Jimmy's tough guy att.i.tude. Frank felt Jimmy was a loudmouth, among other things.

"He knows how to run the machine," Robert said, and left it at that. He wasn't crazy about Jimmy Labate either.

This went on for a while, until Ronnie came over and Robert rolled down the window.

"Nothing," he said.

Labate rolled the backhoe onto a flatbed, and he and the guy with the truck pulled out. Tonight the late Gabe Infanti would rest undisturbed. Tonight Gabe Infanti would stay dead. Hopefully Tommy Karate would get confused about Gabe and mix him up with the platoon of other guys he'd clipped and scattered all over New York.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

December 30, 1995

A day before New Year's Eve, Gustavia Harbor was a bowlful of envy. Snug in the leeward side of St. Bart's on the northeastern edge of the Caribbean, it was no place to be if you weren't comfortable with the limitations of your personal wealth. During the tourist season, from the week before Christmas through April, the tiny little harbor was almost completely filled with enormous yachts. Each was more outrageous than its neighbor: an 84-foot Hatteras next to a 100-foot Denison next to a 118-foot Tri-deck pa.s.senger yacht next to a 140 foot Picchiotti. The staterooms contained giant-screen TVs, the galleys Sub-Zero refrigerators and restaurant-quality stoves. Inside were built-in hot tubs, queen-size beds, bidets. Their owners were Saudi Arabian princes, sugar heiresses, real estate tyc.o.o.ns, CEOs, a.s.sorted old money types. The yachts spent the summer in Greece or the French Rivera, the winter in Gustavia. They were hotels that float, accommodating up to forty-two pa.s.sengers, plus a full crew with captain, cook and entertainment director. The teak and bra.s.s were so s.h.i.+ny it made your eyes hurt from squinting. Bunched together all in one claustrophobic little harbor, the display of opulence was enough to make your head spin.

Warrington and his model girlfriend, Martina, first noticed the spectacle of yachts when they checked in at the villa he was renting at the top of the volcanic hill Gustavia rested against. From up there, the biggest town in St. Bart's appeared below, a beautiful little Caribbean locale. There was a stone fort at the harbor entrance and narrow streets snaking up the hill past wooden shacks painted pink, turquoise, orange and green. It was the typical progeny of imperialistic football, "discovered" by Christopher Columbus four years after he "discovered" America, and named after his brother, Bartholomew. Over the years it belonged to everybody-first the French, then the Swedes, then the Brits, then back to the French. Its streets bore evidence of all three conquering kingdoms. The town itself was named after a Swedish king, while the streets bore names like Rue Victor Hugo and Rue des Normands. The stone Catholic church at the center of town was the tallest structure and dated back to the seventeenth century. Until the early 1980s, St. Bart's had been a sleepy little place. Then rich people and their celebrity friends discovered that it was one of only a handful of islands with absolutely no high-rise hotels, no clanging casinos and no cruise s.h.i.+p armies descending at noon. It was the Caribbean of old, and they decided to own it.

By New Year's Eve 1995, St. Bart's was the place to be for the social register set, which was precisely why Warrington had rented a villa up the hill in Gustavia. From his room, he and Martina looked down on the harbor and its armada of excess. He tried to figure out which one was the yacht owned by Coco Chanel, where he'd been invited to spend New Year's Eve, but he couldn't see from this far away.

After unpacking, he and Martina wandered down the hill into town and strolled to the stone quay, taking in the yachts one at a time. Most still had Christmas trees and lights mounted on their aft decks, and there was hardly any room for more. Every spot dockside was full, and most of the moorings were taken up as well. This was the week to be in St. Bart's. Warrington found the Chanel yacht and was impressed. Its crew in matching whites could be seen aboard, scrubbing and polis.h.i.+ng in antic.i.p.ation of the big party the next night. Warrington couldn't wait.

A few years back, when he was a struggling actor forced to live off his father's income, he couldn't stand the idea of spending the night amid all that money. Now he could handle it, and the reason was simple-now he finally had enough of his own not to feel left out. He was not intimidated by a Chanel yacht or any other yacht. It actually seemed to him something that should be part of his life, now that he was a success.

For a few more years, he had tried in vain to make it as an actor. He trudged from audition to audition and landed cheesy TV commercial gigs. He slogged through one more feature, a B-list sci-fi number called Time Walker Time Walker that was destined for predawn TV. In the end, he realized he wasn't meant for the thespian life. His ego couldn't take it. If he was going to be famous, he needed to be famous quickly, and without too much effort. He abandoned the pursuit of fame and embraced a new crusade-the unfettered pursuit of money. He became a stock picker. that was destined for predawn TV. In the end, he realized he wasn't meant for the thespian life. His ego couldn't take it. If he was going to be famous, he needed to be famous quickly, and without too much effort. He abandoned the pursuit of fame and embraced a new crusade-the unfettered pursuit of money. He became a stock picker.

He hadn't graduated Villanova, but he studied hard for his Series 7, the test required to become a broker. His scores weren't great, but he pa.s.sed and set out to find a job. It was the early 1990s, and the market was a more sober world than during the 1980s. He landed a spot at Gruntal, a one-hundred-year-old midsize firm with a sterling reputation, by touting his investor contacts in the Maryland equestrian set. Use what you know. He made himself a man in demand and, more importantly, a man of his own destiny. For the first time in his entire adult life, he wasn't taking a red cent from his father.

He was there for his clients. He returned their calls quickly. He bet conservatively, rarely shorted, let his clients-especially his inst.i.tutional clients overseas-know exactly what he was up to. He made them feel comfortable. He earned their trust, and he believed that trust was the thing that would make him wealthy. Without it, you could make good money-but only short-term. He was in this for the long haul, and he was sure he could succeed in ways that would make his philandering father in Palm Springs proud, or at least a little envious.

That was a liberating feeling, not having to rely on your parents. Warrington was done with the frivolous twenties and working his way toward the end of his thirties, so he needed that feeling of independence. He figured he was bringing in $250,000 worth of business to Gruntal a month, impressive by any standard. On his trip to St. Bart's, he'd decided it was okay for him to spend a little on himself.

Already he'd bought himself a red Ferrari. He'd landed a studio on Central Park South with a stunning view of the park, and he was living the Manhattan high life every night of the week. He had learned all the tricks of living large-tip the hostesses, drop the names of his family's old-money friends, discreetly mention his own blood relation to the Post cereal fortune and those United States senators. Talk horses-that always worked. Before long, he'd figured out a trick with models. Hot new Manhattan restaurants liked having lots of models sitting around looking gorgeous, so Warrington would go out of his way to find a gaggle of them and waltz into whatever trendy spot he'd read about in New York New York. He'd tell the women they'd get a free meal, and the restaurants always complied. They liked having him and his harem around. It was like investing in the decor.

He'd kept Martina interested longer than most by lavis.h.i.+ng her with gifts and attention. Not that he wanted to settle down. He was beginning to think his father's "First I look at the purse" advice about beauty and money was pretty sound. Martina arrived with a surfeit of beauty but a deficit of cash. So while she was accompanying him solo to St. Bart's for the party of the year, he was not limiting his options. If some other beautiful blonde happened to cross his path, he would surely succ.u.mb to her temporary charms. And it helped when they thought you were rolling in it.

He and Martina wandered in from quayside to the town, stopping at one designer shop after another. This was a town that knew its const.i.tuency. He watched Martina spend his money at the high-end shops, acquiring brand names to display like military insignia. Levi's and the Gap made you a private or a corporal or a sergeant; Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger took you up through the ranks. Louis Vuit ton and Versace made you a general. Strolling through this little town, Warrington felt content. He felt no envy. He could afford this. Jason was far behind him now.

New Year's Eve 1995

The hour of midnight was fast approaching and the breeze carried the scent of vanilla and jasmine. All along the dock the parties roared; Madonna was alleged to be aboard one yacht, Jimmy Buffet on the next. Generators working overtime, liquor flowing like a cataract. On the Coco Chanel yacht, Warrington soaked it all in.

Most of those present were just rich, but rumors occasionally surfaced of celebrity sightings. Puff Daddy was aboard. Bill Cosby had been seen. Sting was taking a leak in the aft head. With plenty of top-shelf whiskey swirling around inside him, Warrington was laughing along with the crowd when one of his New York stockbroker pals, a fellow master of the universe named Lance, introduced him to a guy he said might be helpful.

"Warrington," Lance said. "This is Cary Cimino. Cary, Warrington."

The guy kind of stood out. Most of these people on this crowded boat carried with them a sense of ent.i.tlement mixed with a desire for decorum. They disdained loud talk and bad manners; they ridiculed poor grammar, and looked down upon 98 percent of the world's population. Cary Cimino would definitely be a target for their derision. He possessed an unnatural George Hamilton-like tan, laughed too loud, and cursed like a longsh.o.r.eman. He was sitting at the bar, his extremely expensive Rolex off his wrist and placed prominently next to his drink to be noticed. He shook Warrington's hand and offered a smile filled with white teeth. Warrington could tell Martina didn't like the guy at all. Warrington wasn't sure what to make of him.

They began the usual Wall Street dance, each trying to discern if the other had something to offer. In no time at all, Cary had mentioned he was once a partner at Bear Stearns and had gone out on his own. He was vague with details. He dropped that he had an MBA from Stanford, and mentioned that he worked out every day for two hours. Warrington was beginning to drift, watching the beautiful blondes with tan lines float by in a dream, when Cary suddenly got his attention.

"I've got blocks of stock with a 40 percent discount," he said.

Warrington was aware of the ramifications of a 40 percent discount. He'd heard stories of brokers getting stock at a discount, usually 10 or 15 percent, which was really just a bribe. The broker would sometimes split the discount with his customer, or sometimes not mention it at all. It depended on what kind of guy you were. At that time, Warrington was the kind of guy who had nothing to do with discounts, but 40 percent certainly caught his attention.

"What are you taking home right now as a broker?" Cary asked.

"One hundred fifty a month," Warrington said, not sure if that was good or bad.

"What's your net?"

"It's three fifty net."

"That's s.h.i.+t," Cary said.

That let the wind out of Warrington's sales. He'd thought he was doing great. He was a top producer at Gruntal; he was able to buy pretty much whatever he needed and never had to ask his father or, worse yet, his stepfather for help. He said nothing in reply.

"I can show you how to gross one million dollars a month," Cary went on. "You're buying big board stocks; you're wasting your time. I'll show you how to make some serious green."

He pulled out a roll of $40,000 wrapped in a plain rubber band. Although he was drinking someone else's top-shelf liquor on a multimillion-dollar yacht, amidst people who possessed stock portfolios that could single-handedly pull certain small Latin American countries out of debt, Warrington could not take his eyes off that roll of bills. It was so real. It was naked money.

He leaned forward to hear Cary Cimino better. He didn't want to miss a word.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

By now, Jeffrey Pokross was a stockbroker himself. He'd taken the seventy-five-minute Series 63 exam to become a securities agent, a low-level requirement for anyone a.s.sisting a registered broker. He'd scored an impressive 92. Then he'd taken the six-hour Series 7 required of all registered stockbrokers. This allowed him to solicit investors and buy and sell just about every type of security imaginable. He scored a reputable 88. Here was a guy who'd lived his entire life in New Jersey and Queens and for the first time he was entering the high-stakes, high-finance world of Wall Street. The car leasing operation had collapsed in a mountain of debt. Here was the new tabula rasa Jeffrey Pokross, stockbroker.

Actually he was still the old Jeffrey Pokross. The fact that he had actually been handed a license to handle other people's money was remarkable indeed. That meant he had undergone a background check by the National a.s.sociation of Securities Dealers. If they had taken a close look, they would have had quite a bit to jot down in their little notebooks.

On his U4, the form filled out by all prospective brokers, Jeffrey had mentioned a few civil matters, most of which arose during his adventures in car leasing. Most were law-suits filed against Jeffrey and his company, Three Star, by irate customers. They were usually filed under the heading "Unpaid consumer credit obligations." All were noted as being settled, with Jeffrey agreeing to pay off what he owed a bit at a time from "future earnings." In explaining himself to the NASD, he'd minimized his culpability, insisting in some cases that he was merely covering the obligations of others. Others he couldn't pay because, he would explain, "I did not want to go into bankruptcy and decided to attempt to make payments rather than default to creditors." He owed the state of New Jersey $10,400 in back taxes and fines, and he hadn't even bothered to pay off the $2,397 he still owed in college loans.

Pokross did not bother to mention (and the NASD apparently didn't know) that he was also being sued by the U.S. government. The Resolution Trust Corp., which was sorting out the savings and loan mess, had discovered Jeffrey and his car leasing company had skipped out on numerous loans in their effort to keep their car-lease Ponzi scheme afloat. By 1993, the year he took the Series 7 and 63, his car leasing scam had racked up $1 million in debt.

Nevertheless he got his license, and immediately went to work breaking laws and regulations as fast as he could.

He started at Barrington Capital. This was, in the parlance of the day, an upscale boiler room, a roomful of brokers-some of whom had actual licenses, others who would pretend to be the guy with the actual license who cold-called investors around the country pitching specific stocks. Usually they targeted senior citizens and people who lived in the Midwest. The operating a.s.sumption was that if you lived in the Midwest, you were a drooling rube who might be a genius about cow breeding methods but was surely dumb as a fence post about securities. The other operating a.s.sumption was if you were a senior citizen you had plenty of time on your hands, might be a little lonely and thus would actually stay on the phone and listen to another human voice for a few minutes, even if that voice was owned by a felon. You were, in effect, a perfect target for people like Jeffrey Pokross.

In 1993 and 1994, Pokross and the other brokers at Barrington were hyping their own version of "house stocks," barely traded securities that Barrington was being paid to take public. Most of the company's stock was, in fact, owned by the brokers-at discount rates. The brokers were paid a commission based on how much stock they sold. Sometimes the company bribed them outright by giving them free stock or even cash in envelopes. The idea was to call up the retired postal supervisor in Moon Pie, Missouri, and go to work on the guy. On and on the broker would blather about how Company X was about to go public and if you acted now you could get in on the ground floor at bargain bas.e.m.e.nt prices; once it went public, all bets were off. A key element was to intimidate the yokel into believing that he was, in fact, a yokel if he didn't jump on this deal right away. Questioning the customer's manhood often did the trick. Most boiler room brokers preferred to deal with men because women would commit to buying and then change their minds. Men were easier to buffalo.

And buffalo Jeffrey did. He would eventually admit it all, and even testify in court about it. His description was terse but candid: "I made baseless and unrealistic predictions on where I thought the stocks would go to push it out, push the stocks out to the customers to get more commission."

In other words, he lied to line his pockets. This did not always work in his favor.

Months after landing the Barrington job, the firm pushed him to purchase a particular stock at $40. "A couple of days after I put the stock out to my customers-a lot of stock-the stock went down by more than 50 or 60 percent within a few days. Well, anytime that you sell a stock as a stockbroker and the customer doesn't pay for the stock, the broker gets the bill for the difference. It caused me a great amount of difficulty to continue to do business at Barrington, and the firm was looking to collect $40,000 in losses for their recommendation."

It was time for another job. This time Jeffrey set his sights on a relatively big-time firm, Gruntal & Co. At that time, Gruntal was the fourteenth largest brokerage firm in America. It had been around since 1880, survived the Crash of '29, gone public in the 1980s and was now a worldwide concern with two thousand employees in thirty offices. By June 1994, Jeffrey Pokross had peaked in his career as a stockbroker by landing a job at Gruntal.

At Gruntal, Pokross was forced to deal with real rules and real oversight. He had to sell stock in real companies regulated by the New York Stock Exchange. No more "house stocks." It was more complicated dancing around the rules at Gruntal, but Jeffrey found a way. Some customers require that a broker tell them before they either buy or sell a stock. Jeffrey Pokross decided to skip that requirement for a number of customers. At first, this wasn't a problem. But ultimately when they got their statements and found he had used their money to buy stock in a company that promptly tanked, they were a tad miffed. One customer even called him up and recorded the call. In the call Jeffrey promised to cover the loss as long as the customer didn't mention this little matter to his boss. The customer got off the phone and promptly sent the tape to the compliance officer at Gruntal. Soon, Jeffrey had some explaining to do.

"I got fired immediately. It virtually eliminated me getting a normal job, because when you get hired, you have what's called a securities license. When you get fired, there is a form called a U5, which is an electronic computerized record of the brokerage license. Any type of black mark where you get fired for doing an unauthorized trade, it's a very bad thing and practically no firm would hire you after that."

As more and more customer complaints filtered in about Jeffrey Pokross, he slunk out the back door of Gruntal and returned to the underworld of the boiler room. This time, without a license, he recast himself as a stock promoter and took a job at a firm known as La Jolla Capital.

In the early 1990s, as Wall Street began again to show signs of life after the 1980s debacle, more and more brokerages like La Jolla began showing up in the over-the-counter market. These operations were 100 percent devoted twenty-four and seven to the fine art of removing money from their customers' pockets by any means necessary. Jeffrey Pokross fit right in. At La Jolla, Pokross and thirty other unlicensed brokers sat in a shabby office on John Street a few blocks north of Wall and pitched stocks using the name of a registered broker, Robert Grinberg. That meant at any one time, more than thirty Robert Grinbergs could be making simultaneous phone pitches to various victims across the country. Pokross started taking cash bribes to hype house stocks, but he also learned other interesting lessons: "For La Jolla Capital, it was incredibly profitable . . . I learned the means and methods of getting ahold of a very inexpensive piece of stock, manipulate it, control the trading on it and make a ton of money by bribing brokers."

Manipulation of stock was a nice way of saying La Jolla lied to investors each and every day about what they were doing with their money. At La Jolla, Jeffrey Pokross learned that manipulation really meant pump and dump.

By the mid-1990s pump and dump was a growing phenomenon on Wall Street. Before a company went public, secret partners bought stock at ridiculously discounted rates or were simply gifted stock for free. The company itself usually existed on paper or in overseas bank accounts. When the company went public, stock promoters like Jeffrey Pokross were paid cash bribes to hype the stock and pump up its value. Real licensed brokers were also paid cash bribes to pump the stock, but also to make sure the customers didn't get cold feet and try to sell. If a customer put in a sell order, these brokers would frequently ignore them or try to convince them to stay put. If that didn't work, the broker was responsible for finding another customer to replace the seller.

Brokers would say practically anything to hook the customer and keep him. Take the selling of Jutland Enterprises. Here was a company that had acquired the rights to (but not the property of) a sandwich shop with two stores called Yellow Submarine. That was it: two delis. Why would any right-thinking, marginally intelligent citizen of the United States invest even one cent of their hard-earned paycheck in such a company? Because they were told lies. Jutland was the "next McDonald's." Jutland was planning to expand its operations to compete with Starbucks. Jutland stock would rise 100 percent. Jutland was going to be bought out by another company. You were selling an idea, a possibility. You weren't really selling anything real. It was all nonsense.

Soon Jutland's total market value was $68 million, despite the fact that it had never turned a profit, had suffered loss after loss, and was, after all, just a couple of delis. Investors lost tens of thousands when the insiders dumped their stock.

At some point when the secret partners felt the time was provident, they'd dump all their stock at once. The resulting sell-off would cause the value to plummet, and those that still owned would take it on the chin. In effect, the partners used unsuspecting investors to create the illusion that a bogus company was really a rising star, just long enough to make a killing and get out.

Jeffrey was well schooled in the ways of Wall Street. He had a quick mind for numbers, knew the jargon up and down. He also had larceny in his heart. Pokross was the perfect guy for this game.