Nothing but Money_ How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street Part 9

The morning Accessible Software went public, it opened at $1, about twice what the wives of DMN's partners had paid. This did not make the front page of the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal . Accessible Software of New Jersey was not exactly a household name, but the word on the over-the-counter bulletin boards was that it was hot. The company as presented seemed like a brilliant idea. It claimed to have designed and developed large computer application systems that acted as management software for companies. Run your business by computer program. DMN had arranged a private placement deal that allowed certain qualifying insiders-close relatives-to acquire 1 million shares of Accessible without a holding period. Most of the stock was purchased by the wives of DMN's partners. Now Jeffrey Pokross just needed somebody to make a market for Accessible and sell the stuff. . Accessible Software of New Jersey was not exactly a household name, but the word on the over-the-counter bulletin boards was that it was hot. The company as presented seemed like a brilliant idea. It claimed to have designed and developed large computer application systems that acted as management software for companies. Run your business by computer program. DMN had arranged a private placement deal that allowed certain qualifying insiders-close relatives-to acquire 1 million shares of Accessible without a holding period. Most of the stock was purchased by the wives of DMN's partners. Now Jeffrey Pokross just needed somebody to make a market for Accessible and sell the stuff.

Until now Pokross had traipsed from corrupt brokerage to corrupt brokerage, searching for enthusiastic stockbrokers and stock promoters willing to hype whatever nonsensical company was put in front of them for exorbitant hidden fees, otherwise known as bribes. This was becoming tedious and dangerous. Every time you did this you ran into a new crime family. It was getting like the garbage business out there. Jeffrey decided it was time for a new approach. It was no time to take over a brokerage house and make it DMN Capital's own, and Jeffrey even had the perfect candidate in mind-a small boutique outfit in Philadelphia called Monitor Investments.

Always the opportunist, Jeffrey had run into the owner of Monitor, William Palla, who'd told him he was very interested in opening an office in New York City. Nothing was that simple. Palla informed Jeffrey that he'd heard that to make a good living in the world of pump and dump, you required certain friends. Jeffrey agreed that this was true and said he might be able to help out. Pokross then met with Robert Lino, and it was agreed that grabbing on to Monitor and squeezing it like a grapefruit was the best possible option. It was decided that the newly acquired Monitor would get its feet wet hyping Accessible Software's initial public offering.

Within minutes of opening, Accessible began to take off. By the close of business, it was selling at $9 a share. The wives quickly sold 120,000 shares to retail customers and made a fortune. The brokers at Monitor who did the heavy lifting pocketed huge undisclosed commissions. In one twenty-four-hour period, the three DMN partners-Jeffrey Pokross, James Labate, and Salvatore Piazza-cleared $500,000 in profit. They still had a lot of stock left over when regulators halted trading of Accessible.

When it resumed trading, they stopped the manipulation and went legit. The gamble paid off. The regulators walked away and the stock held around $7. DMN and Monitor were a marriage made in Wall Street heaven. Robert Lino and the Bonanno crime family got their share and everyone was happy, but there was a little problem. When Jeffrey and Robert had decided to take over Monitor, they did not know that-once again-one of the princ.i.p.als already had a relations.h.i.+p with another crime family, a guy named Ron.

Ron was somehow related to a guy who knew a guy in the Gambino family. At least that was how it was explained to Robert Lino when his presence was requested at a sit-down with a Gambino soldier named Johnny R. This guy Ron claimed Robert had stolen $75,000 from Monitor and a solution had to be reached. When the time came for the meeting, Robert Lino showed, along with Jeffrey Pokross and Jimmy Labate and Jimmy's friend in the Gambino family, Johnny R, showed as well, but Ron did not. He'd changed his mind and relocated to Florida.

This did not please the Gambino family. This absence of complainant made them look bad, which in turn made them feel bad. They left the meeting in a huff, then later reached out to Jimmy Labate and demanded he come to yet another meeting, a proposition that made Jimmy quite nervous. The Gambino family was insistent, and also insisted that Robert Lino be present as well to put the dispute on record with the Bonanno group. This time they met in Manhattan. Lino sat down with a soft-spoken captain in the Gambino family named Mikey Scars DiLeonardo, who was said to be quite close to the Gotti family and was believed to be a fan of compromise. Although Gotti had been convicted and was slowly dying in prison, he still ran the family and had to be recognized.

During the meeting with Mikey Scars, Robert Lino admitted right away that he had, in fact, taken over Monitor and that he wasn't about to walk away. DiLeonardo insisted that Lino owed $75,000 to the Gambino family. Lino admitted taking all the money and sending it on to the Bonanno crime family. But he didn't see it as "stealing," at least not from the Gambino family. He offered, as a token of "respect," to pay the Gambino family $17,000 and have them walk away.

"That is an insult," said Mikey Scars.

He was flexible. He offered more reasons why the Bonanno family needed to pay the Gambino family money, as soon as possible. Jimmy Labate, who was supposedly a.s.sociated with a Gambino soldier, had neglected to forward anything to his boss when the guy went away to prison. This was considered an extreme breach of etiquette, and DiLeonardo, a man of reason, suggested that Labate could be the conduit for a $20,000 payment to the Gambino family come Christmas. All of this talk was businesslike, like a company merger, or two money managers discussing bonds versus derivatives. Robert Lino and Mikey Scars were nothing like Jimmy Labate. They both believed that reason and accommodation worked well, as long as everybody looked good and n.o.body walked away with an empty wallet. On this day, their approach prevailed. Monitor became an a.s.set for both Robert Lino and Mikey Scars.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

May 1996

Bill Palla sat in Jeffrey Pokross's wood-paneled office at DMN Capital with the Illinois State University diploma on the wall. Palla was the CEO of Monitor Investment Group, but he was anything but in charge. He was the front man, the guy installed by the guy, the name on the paperwork. He was sitting before his real bosses, Jeffrey Pokross, Salvatore Piazza, and Jimmy Labate, and he was holding several certified letters, all of which were sent personally to him but none of which had he bothered to answer.

He was explaining to Jeffrey and Jimmy and Sal that the letters were from the National a.s.sociation of Securities Dealers (NASD) enforcement unit.

"They want me to come in for an interview," Palla said.

"Maybe you should find out what they want instead of ignoring five certified letters," said Jeffrey, clearly not amused.

The morning Palla showed up at DMN, Monitor Investment Group was the company the investing public dealt with without realizing it was really dealing with DMN. To the investing public, DMN did not exist. Investors saw Monitor letterhead, Monitor monthly statements, Monitor telephone help lines. As far as they could see, Monitor appeared as a multimillion-dollar Wall Street success story. In reality, Monitor was one big fraud concealing another.

For Jeffrey, Sal, Jimmy and the bosses of the Bonanno crime family, Monitor was perfect. Jeffrey had long sought an unrestricted brokerage outside the New York area that he could call his own. He wanted something off the regulatory radar screen where he could hire his own brokers and promoters, where he could run the show from behind a legitimate front.

So far, it had worked well. During the months DMN secretly controlled Monitor, Pokross, Piazza and Labate had made millions of dollars off of a handful of bogus stocks-Accessible Software, s.p.a.ceplex, Reclaim, Beachport and any number of a.s.sorted and sundry capers Jeffrey could dream up. DMN had made $1.2 million on Reclaim alone. At its peak, Monitor had one hundred brokers (some licensed, some not) and three offices in New York City. It was a symphony of schemes, with brokers pumping up stock in unison. Pokross was even able to get his sister, Jody, a job at Monitor as an executive a.s.sistant. In less than a year, Monitor had helped make DMN a growing business.

Much of the reason for Monitor's success could be laid at the feet of Cary Cimino. For a year he'd worked his tail off for Jeffrey and Sal and Jimmy, hustling up legitimate brokers who were willing to take bribes to hype house stock. For a year he'd made Jeffrey and Sal and Jimmy a lot of money. He gave himself much of the credit for this. He estimated that he himself was the top earner at DMN, and he believed that without him, Monitor and DMN would never have existed in the first place.

As Cary saw it, he was the man behind the millions. It was he who'd introduced Jeffrey Pokross to Todd Nejaime, who in turn introduced Jeffrey to the guy who owned Monitor down in Pennsylvania. It was he who'd produced Warrington Gillet, the rich WASP stockbroker he'd found in St. Bart's on New Year's Eve. In the year Warrington did business with Cary, he'd brought in major investors who routinely bought huge chunks of stock. He had his Maryland horse country pals and their blue-blooded cash, but he also had contacts with overseas bankers who were always willing to help out-for a fee.

Cary figured that between Todd and Warrington, the partners at DMN Capital would make millions this year.

He figured they owed him big-time.

"It was a stock promoter's dream-an unrestricted broker /dealer based outside of the scrutiny of New York City," Cary remembered. "Albeit the company had no sales force, but since it was unrestricted, it could grow as fast as Jeffrey could fill it up with his friends. They could make an enormous amount of money with a sales force who came from firms known to make markets in high-commission, low-quality stocks called chop stocks. Brokers from these firms could be expected to be more interested in chop stocks than a broker from an NYSE firm. Once fully operational, with a sales force, Pokross could supply his friends with large amounts of shares, many of which he owned directly or indirectly, with high commissions."

But of course, it couldn't last.

A few weeks after the certified letters from NASD showed up, the phone call came from the NASD. Somehow despite Jeffrey Pokross's best efforts to keep it off the radar screen, the NASD had noticed Reclaim and Accessible and s.p.a.ceplex and all the rest, and connected the up-and-down pattern to Monitor. The phone call was notification of a formal NASD challenge.

Monitor had a choice. They could fight the challenge, and subject themselves to scrutiny with doc.u.ment production and depositions and all the rest. Or they could fold their cards and go away. The choice was obvious. By the end of the business day, Monitor had notified the NASD that it would voluntarily cease trading and market-making operations immediately.

The plug was pulled on Monitor.

"On the surface Monitor showed all the signs of legitimacy," Cary recalled, "but in the background, it was a scam."

Still, DMN stayed out of the sun, and Jeffrey Pokross-as always-had a new plan. Days after Monitor shut down on June 12, 1996, Jeffrey flew to Florida to meet with the head of another brokerage he was all excited about-Meyers Pollack. They were up and running with a whole stable of corrupt brokers ready to push the next stock, Innovative Medical Services. It was easy money-a San Diego company that purported to sell water filtration devices for pharmacies. They intended to raise $4 million. Monitor was just starting to work that one when the NASD spoiled the party. No matter. Meyers Pollock could handle it.

When Innovative Medical Services began trading in August 1996 under the symbol PURE, it opened at $4. By day's end, the brokers of Meyers Pollock had done what the brokers of Monitor could no longer do-they had driven the price up to $7 per share.

Monitor's demise was but a speed b.u.mp on the auto bahn to instant affluence.

October 10, 1996

Jeffrey Pokross emerged from the PATH train into the station deep inside the World Trade Center concourse. He was just one of the millions of salary-earners streaming out of New Jersey into the New York City morning to earn their daily bread. The place was, as usual, like a cattle yard, a sea of hardworking humanity fueled by caffeine and driven by the desire to make money. The commodities exchange was here. Numerous brokerage houses were up in the twin towers. Wall Street was just a few blocks away. Jeffrey Pokross, like the rest of the crowd, trudged along, the latest stock DMN was pus.h.i.+ng weighing heavily on his mind.

The stock was called Crystal Broadcasting. He'd gotten the deal from a soldier in the Bonanno crime family who'd been referred over by Robert Lino. The guy wanted a 50/50 split, and that wasn't a problem. The stock wasn't really a problem either. Anything even resembling communications was selling these days. Pokross's biggest pressure was a.s.sembling an army of corrupt brokers to push Crystal on the unsuspecting investing public.

After a few false starts, everything seemed to be going as planned. True, Monitor had imploded and Meyers Pollock hadn't worked out. There was some dispute with the Genovese crime family over who got to run the place and Jeffrey had been forced out the door. But he and Sal and Jimmy were now working on taking over another brokerage, also in the Philadelphia area, this one called First Liberty. Forget about the WASPy names. This one even had a taste of the Founding Fathers thrown in.

Also they still had some of the old high-producers from Monitor like Cary Cimino and Todd Nejaime and Warrington Gillet. But the best news was a new prospect that seemed quite promising named Jeff Morrison, working out of One World Trade Center. His firm was called Thorcon Capital, which was where Jeffrey was headed now.

Morrison had come to DMN a few months back, recommended by Cary Cimino. He'd made it clear what he was willing to do.

"He said he was looking for some stocks that he can put out to some wealthy clients that he has and he can hold on to those stocks for an extended period of time," Pokross recalled. "And for doing that, he was looking to get a bribe. I thought it was great. We ended up constructing a deal on this Crystal Broadcasting where he would put out the stock to his wealthy clients, he wouldn't disclose that he was getting a bribe, and we sent him some stock in Crystal Broadcasting in advance-antic.i.p.ating that he would do a lot more business. We sent him some stock that he can just hold on to that he can just pay the bribe, pay himself the bribe as he continued to book more stock to his customers."

So far DMN had sent Morrison nine thousand shares of Crystal, trading around $5 through something called a depository trust company. Morrison had sold off about two thousand of those shares. Jeffrey looked at the business he was doing with Thorcon as an investment of sorts. He believed that Jeff Morrison would be ready to do more deals when Crystal Broadcasting was over, which was one of the subjects he hoped to broach when he arrived at Thorcon's offices.

As he emerged from the PATH station into the concourse itself, he noticed Jeff Morrison walking toward him with another guy he didn't know. The concourse was a maddening place, with people streaming in every direction simultaneously, so Jeffrey couldn't even be sure the guy was with Morrison. That's why it didn't seem strange when Morrison walked right up to him smiling. What did seem strange was that the guy walking next to Morrison was holding a gold badge out in front of him.

"Jeffrey Pokross?" the guy asked, and Pokross didn't respond. "I'm Special Agent True Brown of the FBI. This is Special Agent Joe Yastremski."

The guy with the badge was pointing right at Jeff Morrison of Thorcon Capital when he said this, and Jeffrey Pokross suddenly understood everything.

December 1996

The holding cell next to the fifth-floor magistrate's courtroom in the Southern District of New York is a pretty antiseptic place. There are no windows. The walls are pale gray-blue concrete and there's about enough room for one dozen defendants. That's what you are when you're in that room-a defendant. You might be a drug dealer from the projects, a terrorist from the slums of Egypt, a lawyer gone bad or-as was the case this morning-a busted stockbroker. It didn't matter. You were a defendant. At least you weren't an inmate, yet. That was still only a possibility because when you sat outside the magistrate's courtroom, waiting for your turn, you were still considered merely charged with a crime. Not convicted. Just charged.

This distinction was on Cary Cimino's mind when he saw Jeffrey Pokross sitting at the other end of the cell. It was a pretty unusual sight, seeing Jeffrey there under these circ.u.mstances. It made it seem more real, tougher to ignore. The whole scene didn't seem right. Cary always pictured jail cells full of people like Snoop Dog or Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Labate. Tough guys. Not like this, a cell full of stockbrokers. A cell where your cellmate is named Jeffrey Pokross.

"This is your fault," Jeffrey hissed, and the two of them began screaming at each other until a marshal came and told them to shut up.

Cary decided merely to glower at Jeffrey, who glowered back approximately the same amount.

As far as Cary could tell, the charges filed against him seemed somewhat vague. It appeared he had violated some specific provisions of the United States Criminal Code regarding securities fraud. Specifically he had bribed brokers to hype stock, and received bribes in the form of hidden commissions. Cary couldn't decide whether this was serious or not. He certainly did not enjoy sitting in the holding cell inside federal court, but the complaint he'd been shown seemed laughable, as if they were charging him with having too many parking tickets. What they were charging him with was as common a practice in the over-the-counter market as any.

Cary also tried unsuccessfully to remember who'd introduced him to Jeffrey Morrison of Thorcon Capital. Cary was aware that he was the one who had put Thorcon with DMN, but he couldn't really blame himself. Thorcon seemed so real. Jeff Morrison talked the talk. How was Cary supposed to know the guy was FBI?

That was certainly his reaction when the FBI had first knocked on his door at 6:30 a.m. that morning. At first he couldn't figure which broker turned him in, but the more he thought about it the more Thorcon seemed the likely suspect. It was too perfect. Jeff Morrison was too willing to help out. If only Cary had hesitated, but then why would he? The guy was just another broker with a deal. That was the way Wall Street worked, wasn't it?

Jeffrey was led out of the cell first for his appearance before the magistrate, and then it was Cary's turn. As he stepped out into the courtroom, he was confused.

Usually the uniforms of life make it easy to tell who is who and where you are in the food chain. You can tell the real estate broker selling the house is the woman with the floppy hat and clipboard. The manager at the Kmart wears the short-sleeve b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt and clip-on tie, while his minions wear ludicrous matching smocks emblazoned with the Kmart logo. Here in the courtroom, some distinctions were obvious. The judge wore a black robe and sat above everyone else, letting everybody know who was in charge. There was one guy dressed in a pale blue jumpsuit with laceless rubber-soled shoes. His hands were cuffed behind him and he had two big guys in suits sitting next to him. Cary guessed that he was a real criminal and the guys next to him were marshals. Beyond these two, it was tough to tell who was who.

Specifically, it was tough to tell the lawyers from the clients. Most of those arrested were stockbrokers, and most had been arrested on their way to work. They still wore their suits, which made them look just like the lawyers paid to defend them. The difference was that none of the stockbrokers had ties or belts or laces in their shoes. The marshals frowned on suicide attempts while in United States custody.

Cary wasn't quite sure what to expect. His experience with the court system until this day was limited. He'd once had a beef with a guy over money owed on a parking s.p.a.ce. He'd been parking his Mercedes there, and an attendant also let him leave his motorcycle. Then the owner started claiming he owed back rent. Cary spirited his car out of the garage, and then tried to get his motorcycle. When they guy threatened to kick his a.s.s, Cary returned with one of Jimmy Labate's friends and a gun. The guy let him take the motorcycle and then called the cops.

That case had been settled in state court without anything going on Cary's record. This was different. This was federal. Cary calculated how much money he would have to spend on lawyers.

His lawyer, Michael Bachner, was as experienced at criminal defense as any lawyer doing regular work at the Manhattan Federal Court. He told Cary not to sweat it, and arranged with the prosecutor for his release on low bail bond-$50,000, with no cash down. He just had to get two friends or family to cosign the bond by the following week. He did have to surrender his pa.s.sport and would have to ask the government's permission to travel outside the New York City area, but otherwise he was free to go. This wasn't serial murder or racketeering or even narcotics. This was obscure white collar crime, and difficult to understand at that. When he was finished filling out all the paperwork, getting his mug shot, cleaning the fingerprint ink off his fingers, Cary decided he would call up DMN first thing and make an appointment with is codefendant, Jeffrey Pokross.

Jeffrey agreed that a sit-down in a setting other than the holding cell in Manhattan Federal Court was a not a bad idea.

The two met at DMN's Hanover Square office and went over their respective complaints. Jeffrey, too, had been released on low bail. Jeffrey's lawyer was telling him the same thing Cary's was-the case is a joke. They'd fight it and win. The more they discussed the situation, the better Cary felt.

The two men tried to figure out how many people they knew of the forty-four who were picked up by the FBI in the bust. They recognized about a dozen names. That indicated to them that whatever they were allegedly doing on Wall Street was hardly unusual. Three dozen strangers were doing the same thing. Jeffrey argued that spending money on a good lawyer was a sound investment. They would surely walk away from this without any trace of criminality on their record.

Cary felt Jeffrey knew what he was talking about. He'd spent a lot of time around people who'd actually been to prison, so he could talk about strong cases and weak cases. Jeffrey said all the feds had was the FBI undercover, Morrison, and maybe some taped conversations. They'd still have to show that Cary and Jeffrey actually knew they were breaking the law when they made deals with Thorcon Capital. That wouldn't be so easy. Surely the charges would be dismissed. They just had to be. The Wall Street boom was just beginning to really take off, and Jeffrey and Cary did not want to be left behind.

Certainly not by a little arrest.

October 10, 1996

Again and again Warrington was trying to get Cary on the phone. No answer. He'd just seen a headline float by on CNBC about a bunch of brokers being busted, and though there weren't any names given, there was one troubling mention-Thorcon Capital.

The news reports were brief because the story was considered hardly worth mentioning. The reporters on TV didn't even seem to understand why anybody had been charged with a crime. It all seemed so inconsequential. And best of all from Warrington's perspective was the fact that there was no mention of people like Jimmy Labate.

Mostly Warrington was trying to remember precisely what he'd done with Nick Vito down at Thorcon Capital versus what he'd talked about doing. He couldn't really remember but he wasn't that concerned. Why should he be? He hadn't been arrested. If he'd done something truly illegal, surely they would have picked him up with the forty-four others mentioned on TV.

Finally he got through to Cary and he was surprised by how calm the guy was. Cary told him Jeffrey Pokross and Todd Nejaime and a few other guys he knew from Monitor had all been picked up in one big sweep. He described getting fingerprinted and photographed and appearing before the judge, and he made it sound like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. There he was with all these real criminals-drug dealers, gangsters, money launderers. He was released on $50,000 bond and didn't have to put down a cent. As Cary saw it, the whole thing was ridiculous. He made it clear that after his initial shock at being arrested by an agent of the United States government, he and Jeffrey had decided there was no way any of these pathetic charges were going to stick. Cary made it clear to Warrington that he and Jeffrey were going to fight and they were both going to win.

Warrington was more than a little upset. Mostly he wanted to know all about Thorcon Capital. Was the whole thing an FBI sting? Yes, it was, Cary said. From the World Trade Center office to the receptionist answering the phones to the plastic flowers in the corner with the bug inside, the whole thing was a production of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Everybody there was an undercover FBI agent. It had shut down the morning of the arrests. Cary had worked his deal with a guy named Jeff Morrison, who was really Special Agent Joe Yastremski.

Warrington got a sick feeling his stomach. What was Nick Vito's real name?

He couldn't figure out why Cary had been picked up and he hadn't. It must have been a different scenario, a different fact pattern. Cary's arrangements with Jeff Morrison must have been different than Warrington's deal with Nick Vito. What had he said to Nick? What had he done? The Discovery Studios deal had collapsed and Warrington had never actually wired any shares to Nick under any of the circ.u.mstances they'd discussed. Was discussing something illegal itself illegal? Or did you actually have to do something? He had no idea, but Cary told him he had nothing to worry about.

That sounded pretty good to Warrington. He decided not to give Thorcon Capital another thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

February 12, 1997

The s.h.i.+ny black cars pulled into the parking lot at the pier in the far end of Brooklyn. It was dark and the wind whipped in off New York Harbor. This was miles from Little Italy. This was Canarsie, which is an Indian name, though there hadn't been too many Indians in the neighborhood for a while. Two groups of men exited the black cars and greeted each other in the parking lot before turning and heading into a restaurant called Abbraciemento's.

The restaurant was perfect for a sit-down. It was located on a pier that jutted out into the swirling mouth of New York Harbor, a no-exit cul-de-sac that allowed patrons to sit with their backs against the water and see anybody coming into the lot. It was not A Tree Grows in Brooklyn A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or or a.r.s.enic and Old Lace a.r.s.enic and Old Lace or even or even Dog Day Afternoon Dog Day Afternoon Brooklyn. It was a part of Brooklyn that hadn't found its way to the silver screen, and probably wouldn't anytime soon. Brooklyn. It was a part of Brooklyn that hadn't found its way to the silver screen, and probably wouldn't anytime soon.

The receptionist at Abbraciemento's was accommodating in every possible way. Both groups of men were ushered quickly to a corner table where there was enough room for the Bonanno crime family of New York to sit across from the Genovese crime family of New York. It was time for a little gangster detente.

Robert and Frank Lino were there with a six foot four inch a.s.sociate named Eugene Lombardo. They were there to represent the interests of the Bonanno group. Representing the interests of the Genovese group was Ernest Montevecchi and two of his a.s.sociates. n.o.body called him Ernest. Everybody called him Butch. The matter at hand was simple: who gets what on Wall Street.

When Robert Lino first showed up on Wall Street as a silent partner at DMN, Jeffrey Pokross had promised that only a handful of wiseguys knew about the money to be made there. He'd mentioned Philly Abramo and claimed the other families were clueless. That was true, as far as it went, and for a time it was one golden opportunity after another for the up-and-coming organized crime family named after the disgraced boss Joe Bonanno. It was surely a way for the only Mafia family in history to allow an FBI agent to infiltrate its ranks to recover its good name in the underworld. Wall Street was the hills of California in 1849, and it was all theirs. This was, for a time, good news for Robert Lino. Robert Lino was convinced he'd found El Dorado, and so he enthusiastically convinced his captain and cousin, Frank, to get involved in the Wall Street miracle.