About book Born To Steal: When The Mafia Hit Wall Street (2003)
A character study written in the typical journalist's style (e.g. emphasis on Louis not having a conscience, and then describing nothing but conscience near the end). The story describes how an 18 year old gas station attendant became one of the hottest stock brokers in the world of "chop shop" Wall Street. These were brokerages that manipulated the stocks of small companies. They often were the only buyers and sellers of the stock so they could set the price at whatever markups they liked. Account holders frequently lost money by buying worthless securities. In addition, their accounts were frequently "churned" (that is, trades were made just so the brokers could earn commissions). Investors almost always lost all their investments, and then the brokerages would close or be shut down. At one point, Louis made upto $250,000 in a single month, but he never trusted the markets and would keep his money in a mayonnaise jar, and then a small wall safe.The story gets interesting when the Mafia starts to find out about the money being made in these scams. Slowly, they begin the infiltrate the markets: first by "owning" some of the hot brokers (who could sweet talk investors into parting with their hard earned savings), then by offering scam stocks like "Chic Chick"---a single store chicken fast food shop, finally, by taking over their own shops. These shops eventually went from chop shops to bucket shops---brokerages that just took money and pretended to sell stocks.During the good times, Louis went through the entire 90's cornucopia of sins: celebrity friends, mistresses, drugs, gambling, fast cars, etc. Eventually, gambling his way into trouble with the mafia.The good times lasted about 5 years, before regulators caught wind of the scams and started to shut down the shops and the trades. As the trades dried up, Louis came under increasing pressure from the mafia to pay off his mounting debts. Eventually, the pressure became too much and he turned "state's witness" and helped bring in around 40% of the indictments issued at the turn of the millennium.The story is tragic, maybe even cliched. Louis's life mirrored the out-of-control spiral of his industry. The movie Wall Street is mentioned as an inspiration to the boiler room traders, as is Rocky. The lives lived by the traders are as fast, impusive, and debauched as you would expect of 20 somethings left with unlimited funds and conscience free life style. The "guys" are straight out of the Sopranos. The TV show is watched the traders to try to understand the "guys" in their lives. Louis is married and has a son. He is arrested for check kiting and tries to go straight as a pipelayer. But the $300 a week paycheck is too puny and soon he is back on the Street working for the mob.The author does not exactly give us a morality tale. Except for bits of inconsistent editorialising on Louis's state of mind, the book paints a generally sympathetic picture of a young man way out of his depth but trying desparately to reassert so control over his own life. The author tries to justify the gambling as sort of a self administered narcotic for soothing Louis's guilty conscience. A reader would cheer for him except that his redemption was coming from stealing from others. This discomfort shows through in the writing. In the end, the author reports: describing in detail a chronology of the events of Louis's life leading up to the indictments and his own turning into the Witness Protection Program. This straight forward approach lets the reader form their own picture and opinion of what happened.And ultimately, by not embellishing, the story is even scarier and more evil. The brokerages are interested in only ripping off the investor. The brokers have only their own best interests at heart---even at the white shoe firms. The collapse of the investment banks from the securitization mess proves that. Hopefully, no reader of this book would ever buy stocks over the phone. Some may never buy any stocks at all ever again.
Do you know the difference between a chop house and a bucket shop? Louis Pasciuto didn't when he started out in the financial industry. A chop house sells stocks at ridiculous markups, while a bucket shop doesn't actually make any stock transactions at all--it just pretends to buy stocks and keeps customers' money. But Louis didn't understand any of this because he was recruited to work at a chop house while he was pumping gas. He was a fast talker who adored making money, and an FBI agent later referred to him as the Forrest Gump of securities fraud--he worked at just about every significant chop house and bucket shop on Wall Street. (He also singlehandedly destroyed one of the places that employed him, which is one of the more interesting parts of the book.)
Do You like book Born To Steal: When The Mafia Hit Wall Street (2003)?
This book gives a very accurate insider's perspective on the illegal conduct that occured at smaller brokerage firms during the 1990's. It is both entertaining and very informative, especially when it details exactly how some of the stock manipulation scams were pulled off.This is the true story of Staten Island bad boy Louis Pasciuto's meteoric rise to the top of Wall Street's notorious chop houses. The story is the same young guy makes too much money to fast and blows it all on sex, drugs, parties, etc.I had originally purchased the book because people I knew from Wall Street were mentioned in the book. I was curious to see how they would be portrayed in the book. I was happy to see no lies were written about them.
—Caroline Borrino
