Born to Steal : When the Mafia Hit Wall Street

Rating:
Summary: AN INCREDIBLE STORY, COMPELLINGLY READ
Review: Even the most inventive fiction meister would be hard pressed to come up with a tale as astounding as this true story. In this reading movie and television actor Frank Whaley literally becomes the protagonist, a cocky young man from Staten Island.

The young man previously noted is Louis Pasciuto, a former gas station attendant, who built a fortune by bilking the credulous. He talked fast, lived fast, and eventually lost big time.

In 1992 Louis appeared on Wall Street to become part of a "chop house," an unsavory brokerage firm overseen by a Mafia boss. He trafficked in worthless and nonexistent stocks, cramming his hefty earnings into a mayonnaise jar.

Then, just when Louis feels indestructible, on top of the world, mobster Charlie Ricottone wants a part of the take. It's not too long before Louis is caught in a vise - blood thirsty, money hungry Charlie on one side and the FBI on the other.

In exchange for the Witness Protection Program Louis joined the good guys.

An incredible story, compellingly read.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: Best book I've ever read about the Mafia or Wall Street!
Review: Good gawd, this is the best book I have read in a long time--and definitely the best book I've ever read about the Mafia or Wall Street. It is funnier and more knowing than Liar's Poker, and much more disturbing than any of the James Stewart books I have ever read. And it is a cut above any book I have ever read about the Mob--thrilling and funny at the same time.

I read this book in two sittings--I absolutely could not put it down. Weiss takes the reader through the netherworld of the Mafia and Wall Street with a sure hand, as he tells the story of a young broker who becomes a tool of the Mob. It is reminiscent of the story that Nick Pileggi told in Wise Guy or the movie Goodfellas, but with considerably more humor and with a more entrancing style. At times I laughed out loud!

One of the startling revelations of this book is its description of how New York celebrities and sports figures, Jets players and cast members of the Howard Stern show, benefitted from stock scams at the expense of the small investors ... The book also indicates that there is corruption among regulators. Surprising this book's revelations weren't mentioned in a recent Times review--I found them stunning.

Born to Steal's portrayal of Wall Street is dead-on and frightening. What is most intriguing is how the two worlds collide. The Mafia and Wall Street have much the same values and, in some cases, personnel.

The book also paints a picture of the Mob in decline--gangsters who walk into jail almost willingly, as a result of their own blindness and stupidity. Its portrayal of a declining Mob is reminiscent of Donnie Brasco, but with less violence and more humor.

Born to Steal is a winner!

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating tale of the Mob in decline
Review: I have read just about every book that there is on organized crime, and I have also read my share of Wall Street books. Let me tell you, this one is right up there with the very best of the Mob genre--Wise Guys and the Valachi Papers--but with a searing wit that reminds me of Liar's Poker.

I bought this book after seeing its subject, Lou Pasciuto, featured on the ABC News show 20/20. Let me tell you, the story was if anything better than I had expected from watching that show. This is a really outstanding, superbly written book about a young kid from Staten Island who becomes an moneymaker for the Mob on Wall Street.

I read it on one sitting. This book grabs you in the beginning, when Pasciuto is sitting in prison, mulling over the shambles of his life. The book then reverts to a flashback in the best film noir style, recounting his early upbringing in a shabby but honest family. He was constantly the subject of attention as a small boy, and perhaps because of that incipient narcissism he became a thief at an early age--hence the title.

We follow Pasciuto in his first job, at a very well known boiler room called Hanover Sterling. This brings me to another aspect of the book that I think needs to be mentioned. Unlike the few other books that have explored the shady side of Wall Street, this book names names. We get the actual bad guys and the names of the actual brokerage houses. That gives this book an authority and credibility that adds to the excitement.

After Hanover, Pasciuto rises very rapidly and is running his own crews of brokers while still a teenager--before he can go into a bar and drink, as the author Weiss points out. He makes thousands of dollars a week and his life is a whirl of sex, drugs and trips to South Beach.

Along the way he becomes the favorite broker for sports figures and cast members of the Howard Stern Show, particularly "Stuttering John," who was really in with that crowd.

But then he meets his nemesis, a crude gangster named Charlie, and it his downfall begins. Louis is married to his girlfriend, in a wedding scene straight from the Godfather, and it is downhill from there.

Along the way he meets a who's who of characters from the Mob, from half-assed wiseguys in Staten Island to doddering old fools like Sonny Franzese. That this where this book really shines. It is the best portrayal of the present-day Mob--the Mob of today, not the 1990s--that I have been able to get my hands on.

The tale of Louis' rise and fall is filled with humor, excitement and tragedy, and it is told in a humorous and accessible fashion that is really a pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been shorter
Review: I was just going to skim this book because I wasn't sure I was interested in the topic. Before I knew it, I was more than half-way through it. This compellingly readable expose of Wall Street and the role of the Mafia is shuddering. The naivete of the "hicks" who bought non-existent or worthless stocks is a real eye-opener. I wonder now if the incredible rise of the stock market in the late 90's was all a myth based on scams, lies, and outright stealing by bullies who wouldn't know a legitimate stock if it hit them over the head. Every market investor needs to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining look @ the REAL Seedy Side of Wall Street
Review: I'm in the investment business but this book amazed even me. This is a story of a Staten Island teenager who signs on at a chop shop set up to bilk customers of their money. While poorly educated, Louis Pasciuto finds he has a knack for selling and can easily talk these people in to investing with him. But since this is a scam where the brokers make massive money and the customers lose, it's hardly investing at all.

Giving an uneducated 20-year-old massive money is dangerous. As he doesn't trust banks, he develops a better use of him money, spend it. Spend it on toys, women, trips, and drugs until eventually his monthly living expenses are so high he has money troubles that end with a mafia guy entering his life for a monthly taste. Now that's a whole other problem.

Louis Pasciuto's personal history is a perfect overlay for a demonstration of how the mafia infiltrated the investment business. Stories of mafia guys coming in and slapping their brokers around for money are unsettling at best. As always, this doesn't end happily.

I strongly recommend this book for an entertaining educational read of what can go wrong in the investment world. For further info on this subject, see the DVD, Boiler Room with Ben Affleck for another perspective of this 1990s phonemen. Although starting a little slow, once you are engaged in reading this book you cannot put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Great Weekend Read - Hard to Put Down
Review: If you've ever received an insistent telephone call for an investment opportunity that is guaranteed to make you a lot of money from someone you do not know at a brokerage firm that sounds, well, impressive if not familiar, you will want to read this book. The bucket shops and chop houses that employed cold-call cowboys pitching plausible, fraudulent, can't miss ground floor opportunities to the gullible, the greedy, and the insecure were not just a toxic waste product of the last bull market. An internet search of SEC Litigation Releases shows that greed and naivete are (surprise, surprise) in evidence today. Nonetheless, penny stock peddler Louis Pasciuto's rapid rise and fall on this crooked avenue of Wall Street does say something about the past decade's willingness to believe impossible things.

Some of this territory has been visited in fiction (BOILER ROOM, New Line Cinema, 2000), but author Gary Weiss' true account of Pasciuto's world has it all: cash, sex, drugs, gambling, violence, humor. Did I say cash? Louis and his barely out of school buddies were pulling in a hundred, sometimes two hundred thousand dollars a month in the 1990's peddling dreams and phony hopes. Weiss is at home writing about this hard-boiled, street smart world. He captures the dialogue, the profanity, the ironies, and the simple money lust energy that drives it all. He gets inside the relationship between Louis and Charlie Riccotone, a violent, small-time extortionist with a slippery veneer, who comes to represent the Mob's influence in this world as he worms his way into Louis' life. Made for television scenes standout: Raucous teams of telephone pitchmen selling 'hot' new stocks; Louis and friend Buddy on sex and drug benders; a broker thrown through a plate glass window; a party boat adventure that goes badly wrong; Louis hiding his stripper girlfriend from his soon-to-be-his-wife sweetheart; and tense sit-downs with Guys of a certain reputation to arbitrate disputes.

In recent years the securities regulatory environment has gotten tougher, the press more investigatory, the public more suspicious. At the end of this fast-paced story corrupt enterprises go out of business, and people go to jail. A lot of people: Bad Guys, a mentor, and friends. Pasciuto's cooperation with the Feds lands him in the federal witness protection program. Where this young man goes from here, Weiss can only guess. It has been quite a ride and Weiss does his readers a service by taking them back all the wiser from this enlightening descent into the muck.

Rating:
Summary: A scream!!!
Review: Someone loaned me this book--I didn't buy it--so I feel an obligation to the author to come online and tell him that I absolutely, positively, adored this book. It is a scream! Very funny, with an ironic Afterword that was both touching in a way and also comical to boot. The Afterword describes how the feds punished Lou Pasciuto for coming forward with this story.

But the main thing about this book is that it is a taut, tensely written book that holds you at the edge of your seat from one minute to the next. It is hard to believe that the writer of this book works for a magazine, as it seems to have been written by a mystery author. The pacing moves to a fever pitch, as we follow the central character, sliming his way from one brokerage to the next.

What makes it all so fascinating is that this is a true story, and there are pictures to prove it. Pasciuto was an earner for the mob, and the book is filled with vignettes describing some guys straight out of the real-life Sopranos. My favorite involves a guy I read about as a kid named Sonny Franzese, who used to head up the Colombo family but by the 1990s was reduced to low-rent stock scams.

There are also stories of how famous people got sucked in, including cast members from the Howard Stern show.

All in all a terrific book!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting story let down by lack of true storytelling
Review: This is a fascinating look at the other side of Wall Street. Chop houses have been around forever, but despite their omnipresence, you don't hear to much about them these days. The author is a good storyteller and the main character "Louis" is an entertaining fellow who takes us through the intricacies of chop house life. The stories of drug use, gambling (...) and lavish spending juxtapose nicely with the sad conclusion to the story.

Also sad is the fact that thousands of American families lost many millions of dollars to Louis alone. He stole from them and left them with nothing. These poor people lost everything. I still can't get over the fact that anyone could write a check after receiving a cold call from some fast talking NY broker. Hopefully, the public has learned a lesson to understand what they invest in, before they send the check.

Overall, this is an entertaining, and interesting look at a side of Wall Street that most of us don't get to see. And hopefully, we never will. As a side note, the movie "Boiler room" is a good corollary to understanding how chop houses function - the movie does not include any references to the Mafia.

Rating:
Summary: A great read for the uninitiated
Review: This is a terrific story about the intersection of needs and desires between criminals, Louis Pasciuto et al, and their victims. It rings true in every aspect. And, this I say after spending a career in wall street as a stock broker, albeit one who worked for reputable brokerage houses. A part of my business career also put me in contact with people who used these kind of chop shops to promote stocks whose ascendance benefitted greatly those on the inside of the game. Yes, trashy behavior by trashy people, but one should not lose sight of those in government and other societal institutions who perpetrate even larger frauds on the public; the ponzi scheme aspects of the social security system come to mind along with the recent problems the catholic church has experienced with Gay priests. Add to this the recent problems of financial fraud in the Washington DC teachers union, committed against its dues paying members, along with the recent insider dealings of the Board members of United Labor Life Insurance company, a union owned entity, where insider actions led to a breach of their fiduciary duties, in a major way, and it becomes abundantly evident that corruption knows no one source.

In my travels I also learned that the SEC and other regulatory bodies, while having many dedicated and honest people, often let larger crimes go unmolested while restricting themselves to smaller fish that they "can fry" within their budgets. That is they often pursue the "honest guys" who make administrative mistakes while letting the larger frauds continue i.e. the egregious accounting scandal at WorldCom perpetrated by Bernie Ebbers and his minions. Where was the oversight?

A positive for "Born to Steal" is that it's darkly funny and easy to read, and will receive wider exposure by being made into a successful movie. In this vein the more investors can learn about stock fraud the better. I would council everyone to read Manuel Asensio's, "Sold Short: Uncovering Deception in the Markets."

Also, the tendency for readers and reviewers with a preconceived mindset to see "corporate greed" behind every illegal action speaks clearly to the anomaly of the human condition; that on the one hand most wish to see themselves as morally virtuous while retaining an unquestioned capacity for self deception. Furthermore, it could be averred that just about everyone has a price when it comes to their complicity in a deal where "something for nothing" seems in the offing. These subsets of the most human of conditions do not restrict themselves to corporations, big business or wall street. One who holds to that notion just hasn't availed themselves of the vast trove of historical data and anecdote which would expose this self-contradiction.

A good read for the summer!

Rating:
Summary: Start reading this early in the day
Review: Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN'T PUT IT DOWN!!!!! I took this book to the beach during the July 4th weekend and made the mistake of starting to read it in the afternoon. There I was as the sun was setting at 8, and I was still reading it. Everyone was gone and I was squinting as the sun went down. That's how electrifying this book is.

Louis Pasciuto is a parochial school kid from Staten Island who has a slight character-development issue: He steals. He stole when he was a small child and as a teenager he found just the place to practice his craft. Wall Street beckoned, in the form of a well-groomed stock scammer named Roy Ageloff.

Such is the setup for one of the most readable stories that have come down the pike in a long time. Weiss's portrayal of the world of Wall Street and the Mafia is extraordinarily revealing. I heard this is going to be a movie and I can see why.

I don't want to give away any of the plot, as this is one of those books that you read with your hand on the page to keep from letting your eyes wandering down to see what is happening in the future. It was an education on the subject of Wall Street, and I came away from reading this book with a wealth of education that I hope will make me into a smarter investor.

One thing about this book that is surprising is how entertaining and funny it is. You wouldn't expect that from a book about Wall Street or the Mafia. But Weiss has extraordinary comic sense and he brings out the irony in some characters who are at once loathsome and fascinating. He also makes some sharp observations on the abysmal failure of Wall Street regulation and the moronic character of so much that has been written about the Mob.

Born to Steal is a winner in every respect.